Please explain the differences and opinions why I should run either !

home desktop / games machine. running XP on hard drive of say 50 GB ...ish.

Cheers

Andy

windows xp has to run on ntfs or it will crash, fat 32 is the format option for the older versions of windows

http://www.thundercloud.net/informat...ntfs-vs-fat32/

windows xp has to run on ntfs or it will crash, fat 32 is the format option for the older versions of windows

Eh? Never heard that one before, XP lets you format the HD in either.

From memory though if you made partitions larger than 32GB XP will not give you the FAT Option as XP won't create a FAT32 Partition greater than 32GB. Why anyone would want FAT 32 now though is debatable. Some older games though might give you problems with NTFS.

NTFS if you need 4Gb+ files.

[Edited by DJ Dunk - 7/17/2003 6:34:53 PM]

Yer, now where did I put that 2 gig .txt file, hehe ;)

Suppose if yer into video or photoshop etc :)

It's more the case if you have a DVD burner and need to take images of disks and store em,then you'll get individual files over 2gb in size!! :)

Hehehe, wot piracy!!! Oh you mean safe copies and backups ;)

Yer suppose thats another reason to go for NTFS, I did say I dont know why anyone bothers with Fat 32.

Damn pedants :D :D

I heard that NTFS doesn't agree with all software...

My current XP install is FAT32

I've never ran any software that doesn't agree with NTFS. And to be honest, I cann't think of any good reason why a bit of software would know or even care how the disk is formatted. The HAL should keep it away from the metal anyway, so to speak.

Cheers

Ian

Some quality advice :rolleyes:

XP has to run NTFS or it crashes - LMAO. That's why Toshiba ship their laptops out running FAT32 then...

Personally, I go for NTFS on my machines. I could see the advantages of a home user choosing FAT32 though. For example, to make data recovery easier should they have a problem

NTFS every day.

Chris, I've recovered data from colleagues machines when something's gone titsup by simply plugging their drive into my controller. God only knows why, but security seems to be non-existent when doing this... I can see everything - possibly because "everyone" has access to the root of their drive, but...

Also, there's floppy utilities to gain read access to NTFS and bypass security. Worryingly.

Cheers,
Nick.

When you have access to another PC or ERD 2002 (what a life saver that is!) then NTFS isn't that big an issue.

For some home users who aren't up on NTFSDos and other tricks, using a normal bootdisk is easier.

ROTFLMFAO @ the NTFS only information. OMG, it's funny how the silliest things can really put a smile on an IT geek's face :)

Only ever had an NTFS formatted drive crash once. FAT32 is better for games I think but I'm not an anorak - something to do with NTFS not letting software direct access to the hardware (ie it has to go through windows).

Having said that, using win2k at work and although it's ok, the machines aren't powerful enough to run it.

I would say, the only reason NOT to run NTFS is if you want to reliably write to windows machines via a Linux machine.

FAT is quicker than NTFS for sequential access iirc. So would be better for things like Photoshop scratch-disk and Windows swap file etc.
If a disk lets go it really doesn't matter how its formatted.
If you're worried about data loss/resiliance then you need backup solutions and raid.
On my laptop, I use a 40Gb drive with 30Gb NTFS and 10Gb FAT.
Put the O/S on NTFS, get all your drivers, service packs and settings configured, then take a ghost image to the FAT partition for easy recovery. Then write that to bootable CD incase the whole disk fails. That way I can do a full O/S rebuild in 5 minutes if necessary and don't need ERD etc (good as they are) to hand. Any real data I care about is written to CD.