hid Posted June 30, 2006 CID Share Posted June 30, 2006 hey all I just recently bought a new EX.hard-drive and its in FAT32 format. Now on the instructions it says if your a XP or 2000 user you should turn this into a NTFS format. Now i know how to do that and i have an XP but - Whats these 2 formats about and why should i switch from FAT32 to NTFS? i wanna know whats the benifit of NTFS, if the instructions reccommend it. thanks Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TimPawlak Posted June 30, 2006 CID Share Posted June 30, 2006 yes, switch to ntfs... its more reliable for win xp.... Thanks, Tim Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hid Posted June 30, 2006 Author CID Share Posted June 30, 2006 thanks. but i want to know whats the diffenrce and whats the benifit of NTFS? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
toad56 Posted June 30, 2006 CID Share Posted June 30, 2006 Go here for info http://search.microsoft.com/results.aspx?q=ntfs+vs+fat32&mkt=en-US&FORM=SSME Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dlewis23 Posted June 30, 2006 CID Share Posted June 30, 2006 thanks. but i want to know whats the diffenrce and whats the benifit of NTFS? more relyability, and NTFS can go upto 2TB while FAT32 can only go to 32GB. so format it NTFS. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JohnHiersIII Posted June 30, 2006 CID Share Posted June 30, 2006 Hi dlewis, You are right about the 32GB limitation when formating in FAT32 using Windows 2000 or XP. But you can use Windows 98 or ME fdisk utility and FAT32 can be then be formatted and limited to 128GB (127.53)GB which you can then install XP on. The biggest difference is NTFS has file and folder level security. You can specify which users or groups of users can have access, are not allowed access, or denied access. Encryption of the files is also supported on NTFS ver. 5, which came out with Windows 2000. I would only use FAT32 if I wanted to run Windows 9X and XP on the same computer to dual boot. That way either operating system has access to the others files, because Windows 98 only supports the FAT file system. I have seen some 3rd party software that did give NTFS support for 98 though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dlewis23 Posted June 30, 2006 CID Share Posted June 30, 2006 Hi dlewis, You are right about the 32GB limitation when formating in FAT32 using Windows 2000 or XP. But you can use Windows 98 or ME fdisk utility and FAT32 can be then be formatted and limited to 128GB (127.53)GB which you can then install XP on. The biggest difference is NTFS has file and folder level security. You can specify which users or groups of users can have access, are not allowed access, or denied access. Encryption of the files is also supported on NTFS ver. 5, which came out with Windows 2000. I would only use FAT32 if I wanted to run Windows 9X and XP on the same computer to dual boot. That way either operating system has access to the others files, because Windows 98 only supports the FAT file system. I have seen some 3rd party software that did give NTFS support for 98 though. none of the security in NTFS really matters, because it was developed way, way back with old technology. and windows in general is insecure. we were suppose to get past all this and have a good drive format with winFS, but micorosft scraped it so that isnt gonna happen. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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