FAT 32 vs. NTFS for Win XP Home

Factual Questions
1

I upgraded from Win 98 to Win XP home edition a week or two ago. I’m quite pleased so far but have a question about the file system that I should use.

I don’t recall the install process asking if I wanted to change the file system, but I know that I can change to NTFS without reformatting. My limited look at the help file suggested that I should keep FAT 32 unless my hard drive was above a certain size (32 MB?). My drive is only 13 MB, but I also recall reading elsewhere that NTFS is preferable over FAT 32.

Should I change to NTFS or leave well enough alone? Are there any compelling reasons to go one way or the other?

2

NTFS is a great deal more efficient than FAT32 at storing data. Plus, XP likes NTFS much better. I recommend you make the change.

And I’m 99.9% sure you mean that your drive is 13 GB, not 13 MB.

3

:smack:

Yes, that should be GBs, not MBs!

Thanks for the reply. I hope that the upgrade in place works OK since I’m not doing a reformat.

Wish me luck!

4

NTFS is a tad slower than FAT32, but I doubt you’d ever notice a difference in speed.

5

Note that it’s a lot harder to recover your data in the event of a crash from an NTFS partition than a FAT32 partition.

Switch to NTFS if atleast one of the following apply:

  1. You know how to mount an NTFS partition using DOS.

  2. You frequently make backups, so restoring your files is not an issue.

  3. You have access to some other computer that can read NTFS partitions.

6

Great! Now you tell me. The deed is done. It took less than an hour and so far, so good (knock on wood).

I promise though to start making backups since I have been remiss in the past.

7

Also note that an NTFS partition will be less likely to crash than a FAT32 partition. :stuck_out_tongue:

8

:slight_smile: Agreed. But I’ve had problems in the past, and if not for NTFSDOS I’d be toast.

9

Also, for real file security (e.g. to prevent other residents of your house from seeing your porn collection) - you’ll need NTFS.

Lastly, going from FAT32 to NTFS is a trivial but one-way operation: to go back to FAT32 you’ll need Partition Magic and a lot of luck.

10

DOH! I wish you hadn’t converted already! Unless the FAT32 partition was created by XP, the FAT32 partition will have a 4kb “offset” that will force the NTFS conversion to use 512 byte clusters - this will fragment badly.

A demo of the handy BootitNG will realign the clusters so that when you convert to NTFS the cluster size will be 4KB.

Note that none of the above applies if you used XP to format the FAT32 partitions.

11

What if you used win2k to format? I’ve been thinking about making the move from fat32 to ntfs for a couple of years now. I have 4 machines all running win2k or xp. I believe I even posted here once looking for advice on the issue. I still haven’t done it, I’m just a big chicken.

12

If you have a program like Partition magic 8.0, it can do this for you more safely.