fat or fat 32 ?

[confusedXP_user]

i was wondering which file system is better to use with xp- fat or fat 32?
and whats the difference?

 

[brianF]

fat file system has a 2 gig partition size limit, you wouldn't want to use that.

Your choice really is either fat32 or ntfs. Microsoft recommends ntfs due to more security and file sharing options. But fat32 works as well just not as good about the security issues.

 

[happykl0wn]

FAT32 is the best, dont ever leave it, i made that mistake

 

[TechChick]

I've always used NTFS with Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows NT operating systems. What kind of problems did you have?

 

[Brooks]

I use NTFS with my systems. I like being able to compress individual files, especially large files that I only access occasionally but don't want to archive onto a CD.

Never had a moments problem with it and I have been using NTFS for about 5 years now with NT and 2000.

Given a choice between fat, fat32 and ntfs, I would take them inthis order

1) NTFS

2) Fat32


Noticed I left out fat. Only reason to use fat, is if you are going to do some sort of dual boot with NT 4 and win 9.x.

 

[ich]

Make Brooks' statement "The only reason to use FAT is if you are going to do some sort of dual boot with NT 4 and a version of win 9.x before Windows 95 OSR2." since that's when they introduced it. FAT32 is compatible with W95 OSR2, W98, and WME.

I have to admit that I was really carefull to wait and see what happened with FAT32 before implementing it myself, but I've never experienced any problems with it unless it was used on a drive with a proprietairy overlay. I recently made the switch to XP and I have to say that I wish I'd gone FAT32, simply because all of the low-level utilities I've acquired over the years won't work on NTFS - and even some of my more recent programs. For instance: Ghost is out unless you upgrade to Ghost 2002, Partition Magic is out unless you upgrade to v7. I haven't had to try AMI Diag or any of my other DOS based diagnostic utilities but I suppose the ones that load into RAM will work fine except for hard drive testing.
By the way, the reason for problems with even the last release of Partition Magic and Ghost are apparently due to the fact that XP uses what I found referred to as "NTFS3" that is different from the NTFS that was used with W2K and NT.

 

[kramnnim]

FAT32 is said to be faster..you could always convert a FAT32 partition to NTFS if you wanted, but not vice-versa without completely wiping the partition.

 

[Brooks]

Actually ich, the reason I said that was that NT 4 does not recognize fat32 partitions, but you are correct, the original 95 does not recognize fat 32 either.

 

[ich]

I see what you mean now, Brooks. Wanting a dual boot where each OS would be able to access the boot partition of the other. Missed that the first time.
My apologies for "correcting you" inappropriately.

Anyone know how to convert NTFS to FAT32?
*Sigh*

 

[skinnywhiteboy]

Use NTFS

 

[Brooks]

The Partition Magic 7 can convert from NTFS to Fat32. I would backup anything important before hand. Even though most conversions never have any problems, I would hate to the one in a 100,000 to have it mess up.

Microsoft does not offer a built in ability to convert back from ntfs.

 

[skinnywhiteboy]

Sorry to dispute this, but Partition Magic does not convert NTFS back to FAT32. Nothing can. It will, but requires a format. Try it. You'll see what I'm talking about.

 

[Brooks]

Powermagic Pro 7.0 does convert an ntfs volume to fat32 under Windows 2000 and XP. It cannot have any compressed files on it though.

Partition Manager from Paragon also will convert from NTFS to Fat32.

 

[skinnywhiteboy]

Have you done it before? It's converts back without having to format??

 

[Brooks]

The latest version of Partition Manager does convert NTFS to Fat32 without reformating and supports the latest version of NTFS included with XP. Another thing that I like (which was the reason I bought it) is the ability to choose the cluster size in NTFS partitions when converting from fat partitions.


I am not 100% certain about Partition Magic 7.0, I have not used it yet since I have not upgraded it yet since I bought partition manager.