FAT32 VS NTFS

When about to partition your hard drive(s) and preparing to install your
Windows XP operating system, you may wonder which file system would be
best - FAT32 or NTFS? Some users would say, obviously NTFS right? Well -
actually it depends. A decision may not be that simple to take.

Let's take a quick glimpse at the advantages and disadvantages of both

FAT32 and NTFS file systems. We won't get very deep into details, but stick
to the most important ones and try to help readers into making a decision for
themselves. Some of the information presented below is based on personal
experience with these file systems, that we would like to share with our
readers. FAT32 is a much simpler file system than NTFS. It is an enhanced
version of the old FAT16 or FAT file system that was used in old MS-DOS
operating systems. FAT32 was introduced at the time of Windows 95 as a
significant enhancement of the FAT16 file system, one of the major
improvements being the ability to use very large hard drives and partitions
for example (partition size was limited to 2GB under FAT16). The FAT32 file
system is still available in newer operating systems like Windows 2000,
Windows XP, Windows Server 2003 and also in Windows Vista. We must note
here that Windows Vista does no longer support the old FAT16 file system.
Despite of what some users may think, we found the FAT32 file system to be
robust and reliable, in about ten years of use. That's one of the reasons
FAT32 file system is still widely used today.

Now getting to talk a bit of NTFS. NTFS was introduced as the proper file
system for the Windows NT product line. NTFS is pretty fast, but somewhat
slower than FAT32 (our own tests have shown an average speed difference of
10%, meaning that NTFS did perform slower with 10% in our tests; but
obviously other users and configurations may get different percentages).
NTFS is a more sophisticated file system, and it should be more reliable
according to Microsoft, although we could not either confirm or infirm this
yet, in practice. But there are certain advantages of using NTFS. First of all,
file security - with NTFS you can protect your files at the hard disk level,
while FAT32 does not have that. This is very important in multiuser
environments and especially on servers where security has to be enforced.
NTFS also allows the user to specify allocation unit size, and this may be
useful for advanced users in order to optimize their file system usage
accordingly with the average size of files they are about to be stored and
reducing slack (lost disk space). Finally, NTFS also provides file compression
- if you are having a large number of files like documents, html files and text
files, generally files that can be compressed, this feature can be really useful
for you.
On the other hand, FAT32 is a bit faster, although the difference is not big.
There is one exception though. If you are using NTFS and compressed files,
and if your files are of types that compress well, you may get impressive
read speeds when using NTFS and file compression. The reason is, since the
document is compressed, the hard drive still transfers the same amount of
data information per second, but then that data is expanded into system
memory and the resulting data is much bigger than the data being physically

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read by the hard disk drive. This has the effect of significant speed increase
in disk read operations, from the user standpoint. However, disk write
operations are significantly slower when using compressed files, due to the
fact that the operating system has to perform a lot of calculations when
compressing data before saving it to disk.

Now let's do a bit of case scenario:

If you are a regular user, not really that much in love with your computer,
just looking to do your job, then NTFS is right for you. This file system is
secure, reliable, and will peform very well in most common home or office
usage situations.

On the other hand - if you are a power user that wants to do a lot of things
at once, like for example burning a DVD while listening to MP3 music while
copying a lot of files from one partition to another while browsing the
Internet at the same time, well in such extreme condition you may really like
FAT32. The reason is that FAT32 has significantly less overhead and requires
less CPU and disk operations for such massive simultaneous data transfers,
due to its simplicity in comparison with NTFS. Such multiple simultaneous
heavy duty tasks did perform indeed better on FAT32 than NTFS during our
tests and usage.

We also found an advantage of using FAT32 over NTFS that fits us in a

particular situation. When about to replace a hard disk drive that has the
operating system on it (this kind of operation was used particularly with
Windows 2000 operating systems) , migration of data from one disk to
another can be much easier. When using NTFS, the operating system has to
be reinstalled on the new drive. But when using FAT32, you can get away
with a much simpler procedure and retain your existing installation. The trick
is to pre-partition the new hard drive in a similar fashion as the old one was.
If the size of the new partitions is different, no problem - just make sure data
in each partition on the old disk, fits the data in the new partition. Then, use
a disk clone tool like Norton Ghost for example, to copy all partitions from
the old drive to the new drive. This operation may take 10 to 30 minutes in
most cases, then you can put the new drive in and power your system and it
will work and you retain all your applications installed (unless they are copy
protected in such manner that you have to reactivate them when changing
hard disk). You may receive a couple errors and need to reboot for a couple
times, but this is by far less downtime than having to reinstall the whole
operating system and applications from scratch - so it is a nice procedure if
you have to keep machine downtime to the lowest possible.

We hope the above ideas will help you in taking a better decision as to what
file system to use. Happy partitioning!

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FAT32 or NTFS: Making the Choice

Choosing the file system to use on a Windows XP system is seldom easy, and
frequently it's not just a one time decision.. Different factors can blur the
decision process, and some tradeoffs are more than likely. No matter what
method you choose to adopt Windows XP, you will have to face the FAT32
versus NTFS decision. Clean and upgrade installs both require you to address
the situation early on in the process. Later on, if you add a drive or
repartition an existing drive the decision process faces you yet again.
Circumstances may dictate the choice for you, but in most cases the options
have to be weighed and the tradeoffs of using each method analyzed. Let's
look at the available choices.

File System Choices

Most articles discussing file system choices look at FAT32 and NTFS as the
two available choices. In reality, there are three systems which could be
selected. FAT, FAT32, and NTFS. Granted, FAT32 and NTFS are the primary
choices, but on occasion you'll still find the need for a FAT volume. A FAT
volume has a maximum size of 2GB and supports MS-DOS as well as being
used for some dual boot configurations, but backward compatibility is about
the only reason I can think of that FAT should ever be used, other than for
the occasional floppy diskette. That said, let's move on to FAT32 and NTFS.

Which File System to Choose?

As much as everyone would like for there to be a stock answer to the

selection question, there isn't. Different situations and needs will play a large
role in the decision of which file system to adopt. There isn't any argument
that NTFS offers better security and reliability. Some also say that NTFS is
more flexible, but that can get rather subjective depending on the situation
and work habits, whereas NTFS superiority in security and reliability is
seldom challenged. Listed below are some of the most common factors to
consider when deciding between FAT32 and NTFS.

• Security

FAT32 provides very little security. A user with access to a drive using
FAT32 has access to the files on that drive.

NTFS allows the use of NTFS Permissions. It's much more difficult to
implement, but folder and file access can be controlled individually,
down to an an extreme degree if necessary. The down side of using
NTFS Permissions is the chance for error and screwing up the system
is greatly magnified.

Windows XP Professional supports file encryption.

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• Compatibility

NTFS volumes are not recognized by Windows 95/98/Me. This is only a

concern when the system is set up for dual or multi-booting. FAT32
must be be used for any drives that must be accessed when the
computer is booted from Windows 95/98 or Windows Me.

An additional note to the previous statement. Users on the network

have access to shared folders no matter what disk format is being
used or what version of Windows is installed.

FAT and FAT32 volumes can be converted to NTFS volumes. NTFS

cannot be converted to FAT32 without reformatting.

• Space Efficiency

NTFS supports disk quotas, allowing you to control the amount of disk
usage on a per user basis.

NTFS supports file compression. FAT32 does not.

How a volume manages data is outside the scope of this article, but
once you pass the 8GB partition size, NTFS handles space
management much more efficiently than FAT32. Cluster sizes play an
important part in how much disk space is wasted storing files. NTFS
provides smaller cluster sizes and less disk space waste than FAT32.

In Windows XP, the maximum partition size that can be created using
FAT32 is 32GB. This increases to 16TB (terabytes) using NTFS. There
is a workaround for the 32GB limitation under FAT32, but it is a
nuisance especially considering the size of drives currently being
manufactured.

• Reliability

FAT32 drives are much more susceptible to disk errors.

NTFS volumes have the ability to recover from errors more readily
than similar FAT32 volumes.

Log files are created under NTFS which can be used for automatic file
system repairs.

NTFS supports dynamic cluster remapping for bad sectors and prevent
them from being used in the future.

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The Final Choice

As the prior versions of Windows continue to age and are replaced in the
home and workplace there will be no need for the older file systems. Hard
drives aren't going to get smaller, networks are likely to get larger and more
complex, and security is evolving almost daily as more and more users
become connected. For all the innovations that Windows 95 brought to the
desktop, it's now a virtual dinosaur. Windows 98 is fast on the way out and
that leaves NT and Windows 2000, both well suited to NTFS. To wrap up,
there may be compelling reasons why your current situation requires a file
system other than NTFS or a combination of different systems for
compatibility, but if at all possible go with NTFS. Even if you don't utilize its
full scope of features, the stability and reliability it offers make it the hands
down choice