NTFS versus FAT32

  • Thread starter Thread starter Kathy Gardner
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K

Kathy Gardner

After long use of Win98 I am upgrading to Win2k :-)

What is the current thinking on Fat32 versus NTFS, particularly performance?
I've read all Microsoft's material on this and understand the security,
recovery, etc issues, but most of them seem irrelevent to workstation usage.

Does anyone know a newsgroup/article on this subject?

Tom
 
-----Original Message-----
After long use of Win98 I am upgrading to Win2k :-)

What is the current thinking on Fat32 versus NTFS, particularly performance?
I've read all Microsoft's material on this and understand the security,
recovery, etc issues, but most of them seem irrelevent to workstation usage.

Does anyone know a newsgroup/article on this subject?

Tom

Hi Tom,
Click to expand...

Not knowing exactly which articles you've read, or exactly
what you need to know, I would suggest this article and
hope it helps:
http://www.theeldergeek.com/ntfs_or_fat32_file_system.htm

All the best,

GR
 
For workstation use, I think that NTFS is still the way to go. The perf is
almost the same (depending on the specific test FAT32 or NTFS (despite the
overhead of jounaling) comes out slightly ahead) and I doubt that you would
see a noticeable difference. That said, the journaling and general
protection against data loss and corruption is (my opinion) worth the
change.

Pat
 
Pat said:
For workstation use, I think that NTFS is still the way to go. The perf is
almost the same (depending on the specific test FAT32 or NTFS (despite the
overhead of jounaling) comes out slightly ahead) and I doubt that you would
see a noticeable difference. That said, the journaling and general
protection against data loss and corruption is (my opinion) worth the
change.

Pat
Click to expand...

After reading all this, you might think NTFS is the way to go, no one
saying anything in favor of keeping Fat32. Well, the day your wonderful
NTFS system encounters a file error and your machine does not boot, it
will not take you long to regret Fat32 and the ability to access through
a simple boot diskette the file system and correct the error. For all
its touted reliability, NTFS is not immune to file errors the same way
the very stable Linux crashes once in a while and will not restart
without reinstalling the whole OS (unless you are a guru).

I do know that you can buy an expensive software to get access to NTFS
file systems but I surmise it aims more at professionnals than to
individual users.

Furthermore, all this "safety" and enhanced features come at a price
with regard to performance.

After getting burnt, I will stick with Fat32 until I have a compelling
reason to go NTFS. Then, I will always keep a back-up partition handy,
just in case...

Granted and fortunately, bad file system trouble seldom occurs. But when
it does is when your choice will haunt you back...

Regards
 
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