I have 256mb ram on my Dell 8100 which came with winME. I "upgraded" (not
using a clean install) to XP and retained FAT32 file format. I want to
reinstall XP and reformat this time.
Is FAT32 format possible with a clean install?
Yes. XP's too brain-dead to create (in particular, format) FAT32
volumes over 32G, so you need a compitent tool to do that first; I use
BING from
www.bootitng.com without installing it to HD (cancel the
initial install-to-HD prompt and it settles in to maintenance mode)
If you use BING to create FATxx volumes, be sure to check the box (new
version) or answer the prompt (old version) so that the volumes are
aligned for NTFS, else if you convert them later, you'll be cursed
with 512 byte cluster which is s-l-o-w.
If I change to NTFS, will my performance improve?
YMMV. There are four aspects here...
1) Safety
NTFS may or may not be less likely to be corrupted than FAT32, but it
certainly lacks in maintenance options should this occur.
FAT32 has interactive Scandisk, the ability to copy off files from DOS
mode, cheap low-level manual repair tools like Diskedit, and is a
simple file system that techs can manually repair, skills permitting.
NTFS has "kill, bury, deny" ChkDsk and AutoChk, and that's it.
2) Security
If you need to secure one user's access against another, then you'd
want NTFS to apply that per-user/per-account security all the way down
to the raw file system. But you'd do best to install XP onto NTFS,
else the appropriate system file permissions etc. are not set. This
is because FAT32 cannot store those settings, and the initial settings
are only created at install time.
3) Capacity
Both FAT32 and NTFS can support volumes beyond the 137G barrier, but
FAT32 won't allow single files to be over 2G (some contexts, 4G) in
size. Unless your software can work around this, it makes FAT32
unsuitable for DVD mastering, video or sound work, where large files
are required. For that, you may need to use NTFS.
4) Performance
FAT32 will use 4k clusters up to but not beyond 8G, so I use 7.9G for
FAT32 C: in the interests of processor paging (CPU natively pages data
in 4k chunks). NTFS uses 4k clusters, unless the (FATxx) volume was
created with an alignment that NTFS objects to; if that's the case, it
uses 512-byte clusters and that hammers performance.
NTFS has extra overhead, with regards to security attributes etc. and
when I last tested this in the Win2000 era, this made handling of
large (video editing data) files slower than FAT32.
NTFS is more efficient for large numbers of files in a single
directory, as it accesses these via an index method, wheres FATxx
plods through these in linear fashion. That should translate to
faster handling of such files, with smaller critical window during
which these large and often fragmented dirs would be corrupted.
NTFS stores the contents of small files within the file's directory
space, which makes for faster access. The downside - larger directory
size - is offset by the indexing advantage described above.
So overall, YMMV on speed when comparing FATxx vs. NTFS. They are
totally different file systems, and each has particular speed
advantages in certain contexts; the overall result depends on how
these contexts balance out. But whatever the result there, I think
concerns (1), (2) and (3) outweigh (4) in any case.
Assuming NTFS is the way to go, which procedure is recommended?
Install XP onto NTFS C:; other volumes can be NTFS or FATxx to taste.
A: convert to NTFS, backup files, install XP, restore files.
No. If the conversion fails, and you haven't backed up your files
yet...? So I'd backup first, then convert, then install XP.
B: back up files, install XP, restore files.
That's also good, if C: is NTFS at the time you install XP.
Plan B seems more straight forward, but should I be concerned about file
format?
Yes.
For me, I value safety and maintainability over quibbling about
whether Fred can fiddle with Mary's wallpaper, so I go FATxx and I
avoid NTFS except where I need support for files over 2G.
OTOH, a sysadmin trying to lock down a workstation against possibly
negligent or hostile users who have to share the same PC while who
does what is meticulously logged, would rightly tell me I'm insane and
that NTFS is the only way that per-user security is going to hold.
Strokes for folks.
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Never turn your back on an installer program
