I use external hard drices for my work (multi track audio as I’ve mentioned before), and I just finally reformatted one of my externals to FAT32, since this was the only way it would allow me to use a HD larger than 2 gigs without partitioning it. Is there any reason why I would NOT want my externals formatted this way?
CJ
I would think real hard about using NTFS and using NT instead of win 95/98/me. Fat 32 is better then fat 16, but you still take about a lot of room with small files. (There is unix disk schemes also, but software may be hard to find.)
Anyhow I do programming with NT and 9x and I find that win 9x crashes at least twice a day. NT will usually just kill the offending app.
While I agree that NT/2k is more stable for most stuff, it doesnt work well for audio recording. A lot of this has to do with how most of the audio apps are written. I run a dual boot between 2K and ME in my home studio, and run Fat32 for both. If it wasn’t for the audio stuff, I would probably stick with 2k/NTFS. I hear whistler does better with audio, but I havnt tried it yet. Maybe this weekend I’ll play with it.
While I agree that NT/2k is more stable for most stuff, it doesnt work well for audio recording. A lot of this has to do with how most of the audio apps are written. I run a dual boot between 2K and ME in my home studio, and run Fat32 for both. I wind up leaving it in ME most of the time, though, because I use it for audio much of the time. If it wasn’t for the audio stuff, I would probably stick with 2k/NTFS. I hear whistler does better with audio, but I havnt tried it yet. Maybe this weekend I’ll play with it.
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In respones to the original question,
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with fat32 you do take a bit of a performance hit, but not enough to make a differance IMHO. The advantages of a larger partition size, and more efficient use of the space make up for the difference.