First installation

  • Thread starter Thread starter Gary D.
  • Start date Start date
G

Gary D.

Building my own PC and will be installing XP Home (with SP2).

Question: which is recommended - NTFS file system or FAT32?
 
NTFS - it's more secure.

FAT32 has some favor because of it's accessibilty using a DOS boot disk (for
file recovery). But, I feel, that problem has been overcome with the advent
of free utilities that'll read NTFS from DOS.
 
In
Gary D. said:
Building my own PC and will be installing XP Home (with SP2).

Question: which is recommended - NTFS file system or FAT32?
Click to expand...


As far as I'm concerned, NTFS. The only reason to use FAT32 is if
you expect to dual-boot with an older operating system that
doesn't support NTFS.
 
Gary said:
Building my own PC and will be installing XP Home (with SP2).

Question: which is recommended - NTFS file system or FAT32?
Click to expand...


Personally, I wouldn't even consider using FAT32 when NTFS is an
option. FAT32 has no security capabilities, no compression
capabilities, no fault tolerance, and a lot of wasted hard drive space
on volumes larger than 8 Gb in size. But your computing needs may
vary, and there is no hard and fast answer.

To answer your questions without getting too technical is
difficult, but has been handled quite well by the late Alex Nichol in
the article here:

FAT & NTFS File Systems in Windows XP
http://www.aumha.org/a/ntfs.htm

Somewhat more technical information is here:

Limitations of the FAT32 File System in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/directory/article.asp?ID=kb;en-us;Q314463

Choosing Between File Systems
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/tr...prodtechnol/winntas/tips/techrep/filesyst.asp

NTFS file system
http://www.digit-life.com/articles/ntfs/



--

Bruce Chambers

Help us help you:



You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on having
both at once. - RAH
 
Personally, I wouldn't even consider using FAT32 when NTFS is an
option. FAT32 has no security capabilities, no compression
capabilities, no fault tolerance, and a lot of wasted hard drive space
on volumes larger than 8 Gb in size. But your computing needs may
vary, and there is no hard and fast answer.

To answer your questions without getting too technical is
difficult, but has been handled quite well by the late Alex Nichol in
the article here:

FAT & NTFS File Systems in Windows XP
http://www.aumha.org/a/ntfs.htm

Somewhat more technical information is here:

Limitations of the FAT32 File System in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/directory/article.asp?ID=kb;en-us;Q314463

Choosing Between File Systems
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/tr...prodtechnol/winntas/tips/techrep/filesyst.asp

NTFS file system
http://www.digit-life.com/articles/ntfs/
Click to expand...

Thanks Bruce. That's just the sort of information I was looking for!
I tried searching the web for information but didn't find anything as
good as these links.

From what I've read, it looks likely that I'll opt for NTFS.
 
Not to mention the fact that on a drive larger that 32Gb the only option
presented is NTFS, because you cannot format drives larger than 32GB in
Fat32 under Win XP
But anything over 8Gb should be NTFS anyway, more security, and better use
of dsk space.
 
In
Raztax said:
Not to mention the fact that on a drive larger that 32Gb the
only
option presented is NTFS, because you cannot format drives
larger
than 32GB in Fat32 under Win XP
Click to expand...


True, but it's important to also note that Windows XP will
happily use larger FAT32 partitions if they are first created
externally with FDISK from an older version.

But anything over 8Gb should be NTFS anyway, more security, and
better use of dsk space.
Click to expand...


Agreed.
 
Back
Top