Going from NTFS to FAT32

[MikeHunt79]

I'm going to be reformatting my 250gb hard drive soon, and reinstalling XP pro, and I'm planning on using FAT32 instead of NTFS.

The main reason, being I can tinker with linux live CD's, and be able to write to my main hard disk.

I've also heard fat32 is faster, but wastes more HD space than NTFS when storing small files. Is this true?

Are there any disadvantages in using FAT32 over NTFS? It would be nice to know before I take the plunge.

 

[oap]

Dont think you can use XP on a fat32 file system, although windows 2000 will install ok. Fat32 cannot store files over a certain size (ie dvd videos). Maximun partition size is about 30g so you would need a few
You'd be better off making one 30g fat32 partion and using the rest as a ntfs xp install, just put any files for transfer on the fat32 partition.

 

[david334]

Dont think you can use XP on a fat32 file system

You can

 

[ns400r]

XP will only let you create a 32GB partition but will use whatever size partition if it is already there before the install.

 

[MikeHunt79]

XP will only let you create a 32GB partition but will use whatever size partition if it is already there before the install.

If you use linux to partition and format the hard drive, you can have fat32 partitions up to 2 terabytes, so that won't be a problem. MS crippled the format tool to try and force everyone onto NTFS.

I totally forgot about the filesize limit though, it's 2GB isn't it? I could probably live with this... I don't really work with many files larger than 2GB tbh.

 

[Burnsy2023]

My god, please don't go back!

There are many, many advantages of NTFS over FAT32 such as:

Support for: Compression, Permissions and Alternate Data Streams (which allows interoperability with many *nix based file systems like UDF etc)

It is inherently more secure, has better performance with large volumes, wastes less space and is much more fault tolerant.

The only reason you could possibly want FAT32 is for interoperability, but is it worth it?

Burnsy

 

[BillytheImpaler]

Though I'm not opposed to the idea as it keeps things easier, remember that there are Linux utilities like FUSE that have reverse-engineered NTFS and allow read/write access.

 

[MikeHunt79]

It is inherently more secure, has better performance with large volumes, wastes less space and is much more fault tolerant.

Well, I must admit, I don't use compression or permissions, as it's a single user system. But I didn't know NTFS had better performance. I remember hearing FAT32 was faster, which is one of the main reasons I wanted to go for FAT (as well as the linux compatibilty).

I'll stick to NTFS for the main partition then, and use FAT32 on my external drive which can then be used in windows and linux. Thanks for the advice.

 

[Burnsy2023]

Well, I must admit, I don't use compression or permissions, as it's a single user system. But I didn't know NTFS had better performance. I remember hearing FAT32 was faster, which is one of the main reasons I wanted to go for FAT (as well as the linux compatibilty).

I'll stick to NTFS for the main partition then, and use FAT32 on my external drive which can then be used in windows and linux. Thanks for the advice.

FAT 32 is faster for very small volumes (under 8 GB), but how many of us have 8GB HDDs?

Burnsy

 

[MNuTz]

why not partition the HD, 240GB NTFS for XP, and then 10GB FAT32 for use with Linux?

 

[MikeHunt79]

FAT 32 is faster for very small volumes (under 8 GB), but how many of us have 8GB HDDs?

I must've got the info from an old source. I've got a 4gb HD somewhere tho, not that I use it anymore.

why not partition the HD, 240GB NTFS for XP, and then 10GB FAT32 for use with Linux?

I could do, put I'd rather have one huge partition... My external USB HD is already FAT32, so I can use that.

 

[Berserker]

FAT32 has a habit of eating files if you suffer a power failure. Of course anything will lose data, but from past experience FAT32 seems to be more prone to it.

If you wanted to be really adventurous, you could format that USB hard disk as ext2. I'm not joking

 

[fumbles]

FAT 32 is faster for very small volumes (under 8 GB), but how many of us have 8GB HDDs?

Burnsy

NTFS is faster for large HDDs, much faster.

FAT32 ie 2^32 = 4GB file limit.

You will get huge clusters (32 or 64KB) which means a colossal waste of space. It also becomes easily fragmented and easily corrupted.

Also apparently with a 250GB hdd the size of FAT is rather large (which there are two copies, main and a spare).

A reason for the 32GB Windows partition limit:

A FAT32 volume must have at least 65,527 clusters. Also, the cluster size on a FAT32 volume cannot be such that the file allocation table is greater than (16 MB – 64 KB)/4, or almost 4 million clusters.

FAT16 and FAT32 do not scale well. As the volume gets bigger, the file allocation table gets bigger, which dramatically increases the amount of time it takes Windows 2000 to compute how much free space is on the boot volume when the system is restarted.

For this reason, you may not create a FAT32 volume larger than 32 GB using the Format utility. However, the Windows 2000 Fastfat driver enables you to mount and fully support a FAT32 volume larger than 32 GB.