Should I format my USB stick with NTFS or FAT32 if using only with Win ?

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Joe deAngelo

Should I format my USB stick with FAT32 or NTFS if I plan to use it only on WinXP, Vista and Win2K
systems ?

I would prefer NTFS. Are there any downsides ?

Joe
 
Joe deAngelo said:
Should I format my USB stick with FAT32 or NTFS if I plan to use it only
on WinXP, Vista and Win2K
systems ?

I would prefer NTFS. Are there any downsides ?

Joe
Click to expand...

No, there aren't.
 
Use NTSF if you want, you would only have an issue with "other"
operating systems.

BTW the microsoft.public.windowsxp.help_and_support group is for
discussion of issues involving Windows "Help and Support" "as in
"Start", "Help and Support"
 
Should I format my USB stick with FAT32 or NTFS if I plan to use it only on WinXP, Vista and Win2K
systems ?

I would prefer NTFS. Are there any downsides ?

Joe
Click to expand...

FA32 is more universally recognized. NTFS would not give you any
benefit. Not even if you wanted to put security on files.

- Thee Chicago Wolf
 
I think FAT32 has a larger cluster size (size of minimal allocated chunk)
than NTFS, thus producing more waste if you have lots of small files.

But FAT32 is recognized by for example Linux, which may or may not,
depending on who you talk to, reliably deal with NTFS, should you
want to maintain that option.

The problem being that NTFS is not open source so people not on the
inside can't write perfect code to deal with it very easily.
 
Joe said:
Should I format my USB stick with FAT32 or NTFS if I plan to use it only on WinXP, Vista and Win2K
systems ?

I would prefer NTFS. Are there any downsides ?
Click to expand...

With NTFS XP and higher activate a write cache on
'removable' USB drive and NTFS delays some write
accesses for a long time.
So you always have to use the 'Safe removal'. It's
a good idea on FAT formatted USB drives too but
with NTFS it's a must.


Uwe
 
Joe deAngelo said:
Should I format my USB stick with FAT32 or NTFS if I
plan to use it only on WinXP, Vista and Win2K systems ?
Click to expand...

The main consideration is that if you ever plan to put
very big files over 2GB on it, then you cant use FAT32.

Those are mostly PVR capture files, produced when recording TV etc.
I would prefer NTFS. Are there any downsides ?
Click to expand...

There are a lot less free recovery tools that support NTFS.
 
I think FAT32 has a larger cluster size (size of minimal allocated chunk)
than NTFS,
Click to expand...


It depends on the size of the drive/partition, but if it's more than
8GB, that's correct.

thus producing more waste if you have lots of small files.
Click to expand...


No, the size of the files is not generally significant. Every file, on
the average, wastes approximately half of its last cluster. So the
amount of waste depends on how many *total* files you have, not how
many small ones. The total amount of waste is roughly equal to half
the cluster size times the total number of files.
 
What is the size of the drive, flash or harddisk based?
I tend to keep any drive under the 120GB mark on FAT, except where there
is a technical need for another filesystem. (For example when you need to
have filesizes over 2GB, such as when editing video).
That is personal preference however, and helps with portability.



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