Processor overhead NTFS vs FAT32

[s]

I have an old Cyrix 486 dx4/100 machine running Win 2k that I use for NAT
and storage. It idles at 10% processor when just running NAT and it's happy
to still have a job on my net.. I was considering converting from FAT32 to
NTFS. Which file system is easier on the cpu?

 

[Dave Patrick]

The cpu cares nothing about the file system. NTFS is the native file system
of Windows 2000. NTFS is more reliable,
allows file level encryption, file level compression, file level access
permissions. In general a much more secure file system. A disadvantage may
be that if you dual-boot, then the other OS; Win98/ME can't read NTFS
without some third party support.

If you use the Windows NT/ 2000 convert.exe utility to convert an existing
fat16/ 32 partition to NTFS, you'll end up with 512 byte clusters which is
less efficient, slower, and more prone to fragmentation. The overhead of
traversing a greater number of clusters to retrieve and commit data will
result in a degradation in file system (or disk I/O) performance. It's best
to choose NTFS at the time of install.

 

[s]

Thanks much Dave-

I guess reformatting the D: drive as NTFS would avoid the 512 byte clusters
on D:?

Also, is defrag the best tool for checking cluster size? Looked at chkdsk /?
but didn't see anything.

My Athlon machine has 4kb clusters. If I recall, that's normal on a 30 gig
drive?

The cpu cares nothing about the file system. NTFS is the native file system
of Windows 2000. NTFS is more reliable,
allows file level encryption, file level compression, file level access
permissions. In general a much more secure file system. A disadvantage may
be that if you dual-boot, then the other OS; Win98/ME can't read NTFS
without some third party support.

If you use the Windows NT/ 2000 convert.exe utility to convert an existing
fat16/ 32 partition to NTFS, you'll end up with 512 byte clusters which is
less efficient, slower, and more prone to fragmentation. The overhead of
traversing a greater number of clusters to retrieve and commit data will
result in a degradation in file system (or disk I/O) performance. It's best
to choose NTFS at the time of install.


--
Regards,

Dave Patrick ....Please no email replies - reply in newsgroup.
Microsoft MVP [Windows NT/2000 Operating Systems]

I have an old Cyrix 486 dx4/100 machine running Win 2k that I use for NAT
and storage. It idles at 10% processor when just running NAT and it's happy
to still have a job on my net.. I was considering converting from FAT32 to
NTFS. Which file system is easier on the cpu?

 

[Ricardo M. Urbano - W2K/NT4 MVP]

The cpu cares nothing about the file system. NTFS is the native file system
of Windows 2000. NTFS is more reliable,
allows file level encryption, file level compression, file level access
permissions. In general a much more secure file system. A disadvantage may
be that if you dual-boot, then the other OS; Win98/ME can't read NTFS
without some third party support.

If you use the Windows NT/ 2000 convert.exe utility to convert an existing
fat16/ 32 partition to NTFS, you'll end up with 512 byte clusters which is
less efficient, slower, and more prone to fragmentation. The overhead of
traversing a greater number of clusters to retrieve and commit data will
result in a degradation in file system (or disk I/O) performance. It's best
to choose NTFS at the time of install.

--
Regards,

Dave Patrick ....Please no email replies - reply in newsgroup.
Microsoft MVP [Windows NT/2000 Operating Systems]

I have an old Cyrix 486 dx4/100 machine running Win 2k that I use for NAT
and storage. It idles at 10% processor when just running NAT and it's happy
to still have a job on my net.. I was considering converting from FAT32 to
NTFS. Which file system is easier on the cpu?

Dave, I would have to disagree. Although it may be minimal, it might
not be trivial on an older machine. NTFS performs more housekeeping
duties (transactioning, native compressions and encryption, acls, etc.),
so the OS is busier using an NTFS volume vs. a FAT volume. To write to
FAT is extremely simple: write the data, then update the FAT. There
aren't even 2 copies of the FAT under NTx to say that it needs to update
2 FAT's.

 

[Greg Hayes/Raxco Software]

Ricardo,

There are 2 copies of the FAT

- Greg/Raxco Software
Microsoft MVP - Windows File System

The cpu cares nothing about the file system. NTFS is the native file system
of Windows 2000. NTFS is more reliable,
allows file level encryption, file level compression, file level access
permissions. In general a much more secure file system. A disadvantage may
be that if you dual-boot, then the other OS; Win98/ME can't read NTFS
without some third party support.

If you use the Windows NT/ 2000 convert.exe utility to convert an existing
fat16/ 32 partition to NTFS, you'll end up with 512 byte clusters which is
less efficient, slower, and more prone to fragmentation. The overhead of
traversing a greater number of clusters to retrieve and commit data will
result in a degradation in file system (or disk I/O) performance. It's best
to choose NTFS at the time of install.

--
Regards,

Dave Patrick ....Please no email replies - reply in newsgroup.
Microsoft MVP [Windows NT/2000 Operating Systems]

I have an old Cyrix 486 dx4/100 machine running Win 2k that I use for NAT
and storage. It idles at 10% processor when just running NAT and it's happy
to still have a job on my net.. I was considering converting from FAT32 to
NTFS. Which file system is easier on the cpu?

Dave, I would have to disagree. Although it may be minimal, it might
not be trivial on an older machine. NTFS performs more housekeeping
duties (transactioning, native compressions and encryption, acls, etc.),
so the OS is busier using an NTFS volume vs. a FAT volume. To write to
FAT is extremely simple: write the data, then update the FAT. There
aren't even 2 copies of the FAT under NTx to say that it needs to update
2 FAT's.

 

[Rick]

Not for FAT16. FAT32 has two.

Rick

Ricardo,

There are 2 copies of the FAT

- Greg/Raxco Software
Microsoft MVP - Windows File System

The cpu cares nothing about the file system. NTFS is the native file system
of Windows 2000. NTFS is more reliable,
allows file level encryption, file level compression, file level access
permissions. In general a much more secure file system. A disadvantage may
be that if you dual-boot, then the other OS; Win98/ME can't read NTFS
without some third party support.

If you use the Windows NT/ 2000 convert.exe utility to convert an existing
fat16/ 32 partition to NTFS, you'll end up with 512 byte clusters which is
less efficient, slower, and more prone to fragmentation. The overhead of
traversing a greater number of clusters to retrieve and commit data will
result in a degradation in file system (or disk I/O) performance. It's best
to choose NTFS at the time of install.

--
Regards,

Dave Patrick ....Please no email replies - reply in newsgroup.
Microsoft MVP [Windows NT/2000 Operating Systems]

:
I have an old Cyrix 486 dx4/100 machine running Win 2k that I use for NAT
and storage. It idles at 10% processor when just running NAT and it's
happy
to still have a job on my net.. I was considering converting from FAT32 to
NTFS. Which file system is easier on the cpu?

Dave, I would have to disagree. Although it may be minimal, it might
not be trivial on an older machine. NTFS performs more housekeeping
duties (transactioning, native compressions and encryption, acls, etc.),
so the OS is busier using an NTFS volume vs. a FAT volume. To write to
FAT is extremely simple: write the data, then update the FAT. There
aren't even 2 copies of the FAT under NTx to say that it needs to update
2 FAT's.

 

[Dave Patrick]

Thanks Ricardo

 

[s]

Well I needed to swap some hardware around anyway so I tried it.

Machine is too old to boot from CD so copied CD to the D: drive... created a
40 meg partition to hold DOS... installed DOS so I could get smartdrive...
installed win2k onto E: (ext dos partition on same disk as C using NTFS...
didn't seem to like the dual partitions... lots of messages about
svchost.exe creating error... going into disk manager I got "The RPC server
is unavailable".

Had to pull drive out and put into a P200 running win2k to delete the
partitions. Then fdisked with Win98 startup disk and reformatted with FAT32.
Installed Win98 and ran install from Win2k CD this time... Likes this
better... patching now... but the IE6 SP1 patch is taking forever to finish
the install- file download stopped 45 minutes ago... CPU is idling at around
4% but the progress bar is only ticking one tick every ten minutes or so...
no disk activity but it *is* progressing very slowly.. can't imagine what
it's doing since CPU is basically idle. Can't get into disk manager again
and getting "The RPC server is unavailable".

Might have to break down and put this P166 board into it and retire the 486
=( or I may try a new install just using FAT32 and see what happens.
Previous working Win2k install on this box was an upgrade from Win98 on a
whim just to see if it would take it- was using Sygate before.

This machine is also using LBA which might have something to do with it.
Also only running 64 meg ram but for NAT it was ok.

The cpu cares nothing about the file system. NTFS is the native file system
of Windows 2000. NTFS is more reliable,
allows file level encryption, file level compression, file level access
permissions. In general a much more secure file system. A disadvantage may
be that if you dual-boot, then the other OS; Win98/ME can't read NTFS
without some third party support.

If you use the Windows NT/ 2000 convert.exe utility to convert an existing
fat16/ 32 partition to NTFS, you'll end up with 512 byte clusters which is
less efficient, slower, and more prone to fragmentation. The overhead of
traversing a greater number of clusters to retrieve and commit data will
result in a degradation in file system (or disk I/O) performance. It's best
to choose NTFS at the time of install.

--
Regards,

Dave Patrick ....Please no email replies - reply in newsgroup.
Microsoft MVP [Windows NT/2000 Operating Systems]

I have an old Cyrix 486 dx4/100 machine running Win 2k that I use for NAT
and storage. It idles at 10% processor when just running NAT and it's happy
to still have a job on my net.. I was considering converting from FAT32 to
NTFS. Which file system is easier on the cpu?

Dave, I would have to disagree. Although it may be minimal, it might
not be trivial on an older machine. NTFS performs more housekeeping
duties (transactioning, native compressions and encryption, acls, etc.),
so the OS is busier using an NTFS volume vs. a FAT volume. To write to
FAT is extremely simple: write the data, then update the FAT. There
aren't even 2 copies of the FAT under NTx to say that it needs to update
2 FAT's.

 

[Greg Hayes/Raxco Software]

FAT16 has 2 as well.

The interesting thing about this is that under NT4 when you would run CHKDSK
and it would find a problem, it would always assume that FAT1 was the
correct one and not use FAT2. As a result, if there was a problem with
FAT1, it would replicate that problem to FAT2.

- Greg/Raxco Software
Microsoft MVP - Windows File System

Not for FAT16. FAT32 has two.

Rick

"Greg Hayes/Raxco Software" <[email protected]> wrote in

message news:[email protected]...

Ricardo,

There are 2 copies of the FAT

- Greg/Raxco Software
Microsoft MVP - Windows File System

Dave Patrick wrote:

The cpu cares nothing about the file system. NTFS is the native file system
of Windows 2000. NTFS is more reliable,
allows file level encryption, file level compression, file level access
permissions. In general a much more secure file system. A

disadvantage
may

be that if you dual-boot, then the other OS; Win98/ME can't read NTFS
without some third party support.

If you use the Windows NT/ 2000 convert.exe utility to convert an existing
fat16/ 32 partition to NTFS, you'll end up with 512 byte clusters

which
is

less efficient, slower, and more prone to fragmentation. The overhead of
traversing a greater number of clusters to retrieve and commit data will
result in a degradation in file system (or disk I/O) performance.

It's
best

to choose NTFS at the time of install.

--
Regards,

Dave Patrick ....Please no email replies - reply in newsgroup.
Microsoft MVP [Windows NT/2000 Operating Systems]

:
I have an old Cyrix 486 dx4/100 machine running Win 2k that I use

for
NAT

and storage. It idles at 10% processor when just running NAT and it's
happy
to still have a job on my net.. I was considering converting from FAT32 to
NTFS. Which file system is easier on the cpu?



Dave, I would have to disagree. Although it may be minimal, it might
not be trivial on an older machine. NTFS performs more housekeeping
duties (transactioning, native compressions and encryption, acls, etc.),
so the OS is busier using an NTFS volume vs. a FAT volume. To write to
FAT is extremely simple: write the data, then update the FAT. There
aren't even 2 copies of the FAT under NTx to say that it needs to update
2 FAT's.

 

[Ricardo M. Urbano - W2K/NT4 MVP]

Ricardo,

There are 2 copies of the FAT

- Greg/Raxco Software
Microsoft MVP - Windows File System

The cpu cares nothing about the file system. NTFS is the native file system
of Windows 2000. NTFS is more reliable,
allows file level encryption, file level compression, file level access
permissions. In general a much more secure file system. A disadvantage may
be that if you dual-boot, then the other OS; Win98/ME can't read NTFS
without some third party support.

If you use the Windows NT/ 2000 convert.exe utility to convert an existing
fat16/ 32 partition to NTFS, you'll end up with 512 byte clusters which is
less efficient, slower, and more prone to fragmentation. The overhead of
traversing a greater number of clusters to retrieve and commit data will
result in a degradation in file system (or disk I/O) performance. It's best
to choose NTFS at the time of install.

--
Regards,

Dave Patrick ....Please no email replies - reply in newsgroup.
Microsoft MVP [Windows NT/2000 Operating Systems]

:
I have an old Cyrix 486 dx4/100 machine running Win 2k that I use for NAT
and storage. It idles at 10% processor when just running NAT and it's
happy
to still have a job on my net.. I was considering converting from FAT32 to
NTFS. Which file system is easier on the cpu?

Dave, I would have to disagree. Although it may be minimal, it might
not be trivial on an older machine. NTFS performs more housekeeping
duties (transactioning, native compressions and encryption, acls, etc.),
so the OS is busier using an NTFS volume vs. a FAT volume. To write to
FAT is extremely simple: write the data, then update the FAT. There
aren't even 2 copies of the FAT under NTx to say that it needs to update
2 FAT's.

Greg, I thought the way NTx was able to create and use 4GB FAT16
partitions was by using the second FAT instead of reserving it as a
redundant copy?