FAT or NTFS?

[The_YongGrand]

Oh, well, the above question explains it all, what's the difference between this two partitions? I know FAT is for Win98 and earlier programs, and NTFS is for WinXP and WinNT (Correct me if I'm wrong!)..... What's the performance difference? Is NTFS going to help when I'm using WinXP? Please advise....

[Cricket]

Going to Google.com and typing in "NTFS vs. FAT32" got me tons of hits. Here are a few...

NTFS vs. FAT: Which Is Right for You?

NTFS vs FAT32

NTFS versus FAT32

Cricket

[whazzzdat]

I think if you are trying to get every bit of performance for video games that you can then FAT32 has an advantage over NTFS. I have always used FAT32 with Windows XP Home Edition SP 1 and it works quite well. I do not run SP 2 because it caused some programs to crash.

NTFS in not needed unless your hard drive is over 137gb or you need NTFS's added security for sharing your computer with someone. I tried NTFS once and went back to FAT32 when I found out that I could not move some files with Total Commander anymore. Also if my motherboard or CPU failed I could not put the drive in my backup computer with Win98 and get files off the drive.

When I recently used Seagate DiscWizard for formatting a new drive and chose my OS as WinXP and file system as FAT32 then ran my WinXP install disc it tried to force me to use NTFS but when I ran the Seagate DiscWizard again and selected from the menu Win98 as the OS it let me keep FAT32 when I installed WinXP.

If that method would have failed I would have written all zeros to the hard drive with Darik's Boot & Nuke, then booted to a Win98 boot disc, chose "support with CD ROM," typed "FDISK", chose "enable large disk," then after reboot typed "FORMAT C:", then booted to the WinXP restore disc and chose "leave current file system intact".

I do not like Microsoft and Seagate trying to force NTFS on me.

[Kov-Ice]

There are alot of advantages to NTFS over the older system. FAT32 has a 4GB file size limit, so if you do anything with video files (.avi, DVD files, etc.), then FAT32 is out. Also, your partition size can only go up to 37GB, which is limiting when you get into the larger HDDs that are available now.

[whazzzdat]

I don't see how FAT32 can have a partition size limitaton of 37gb when I set just one partition of 80gb on a 80gb Seagate harddrive and it works fine.

[Force Flow]

When NTFS was new, there was reason to question its use over FAT32. Now, since it's been around a while and most disk utilities have NTFS support, there should be no question as to which one to go with in this sort of situation. NTFS is the best was to go in your case.

[glc]

I believe he meant 137gb.