Win2k - NTFS or FAT32?

[Doug]

What is the decision tree for choosing between NTFS and
FAT32? I'll be installing Win2k Pro onto a new 40GB hard
drive that I'll be installing in my laptop. An
engineering buddy of mine told me I need to use NTFS for
anything over 32GB. He also said NTFS is better than
FAT32, but I don't know anything about these two file
structures so I don't know what the trade-offs are. Can
any of you (dis?)confirm what I've been told and describe
the decision process for selecting one file structure over
the other?

Thanks.

 

[philo]

What is the decision tree for choosing between NTFS and
FAT32? I'll be installing Win2k Pro onto a new 40GB hard
drive that I'll be installing in my laptop. An
engineering buddy of mine told me I need to use NTFS for
anything over 32GB. He also said NTFS is better than
FAT32, but I don't know anything about these two file
structures so I don't know what the trade-offs are. Can
any of you (dis?)confirm what I've been told and describe
the decision process for selecting one file structure over
the other?

Thanks.

first off...you can use fat32 on a 40gig partition...but due to the
large cluster size...there'd be a lot of wasted space...
so for better cluster size, fault tolerance and security
you should definately use NTFS...

for small drives...you may get a little better performance with fat32...
but with a 40 gig drive or larger i'd definately say to use NTFS

 

[Bruce Chambers]

What is the decision tree for choosing between NTFS and
FAT32? I'll be installing Win2k Pro onto a new 40GB hard
drive that I'll be installing in my laptop. An
engineering buddy of mine told me I need to use NTFS for
anything over 32GB. He also said NTFS is better than
FAT32, but I don't know anything about these two file
structures so I don't know what the trade-offs are. Can
any of you (dis?)confirm what I've been told and describe
the decision process for selecting one file structure over
the other?

Thanks.

By design, Win2K cannot create and format a new partition greater
than 32 Gb. However, the OS has no problems being installed upon or
otherwise using FAT32 a partition larger than 32 GB, as long as that
partition has been created/formatted by another OS, such as Win98.

Personally, I wouldn't even consider using FAT32 when NTFS is an
option. FAT32 has no security capabilities, no compression
capabilities, no fault tolerance, and a lot of wasted hard drive space
on volumes larger than 8 Gb in size. But your computing needs may
vary, and there is no hard and fast answer. While a couple of the
links below refer to WinXP, the information is still quite accurate
for Win2K, as well.

To answer your questions without getting too technical is
difficult, but has been handled quite well by Alex Nichol in the
article here:

FAT & NTFS File Systems in Windows XP
http://www.aumha.org/a/ntfs.htm

Somewhat more technical information is here:

Limitations of the FAT32 File System in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/directory/article.asp?ID=kb;en-us;Q314463

Choosing Between File Systems
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/tr...prodtechnol/winntas/tips/techrep/filesyst.asp

NTFS file system
http://www.digit-life.com/articles/ntfs/

--

Bruce Chambers

Help us help you:



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[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

first off...you can use fat32 on a 40gig partition...but due to the
large cluster size...there'd be a lot of wasted space...
so for better cluster size, fault tolerance and security
you should definately use NTFS...

for small drives...you may get a little better performance with fat32...
but with a 40 gig drive or larger i'd definately say to use NTFS

NTFS is always slower than FAT32, due to increased overheads.
For large folders (> 5000 files), NFTS may take twice as long to
access files than FAT32. On the other hand, NFTS is the native
file system for Win2000 and WinXP. I suggest you use it because
of its many other advantages, and keep your folders to a reasonable
size.

 

[Elijah Landreth [MSFT]]

I would recommend this KB article for an overview 100108 Overview of FAT,
HPFS, and NTFS File Systems
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=100108

This one will tell you about the limitations of Fat32 184006 Limitations of
FAT32 File System
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=184006

Personally, I would recommend NTFS and 2 basic partitions. One with your
OS and one for DATA. Then again, unless you want to try to squeeze every
ounce of performance from your system, and arent as concerned with data
recovery in case of failure 1 40gb NTFS BASIC partition is fine, especially
for a home system.

For even more info on tuning NTFS, have a look at
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/Windows/XP/all/reskit/en-us
/Default.asp?url=/resources/documentation/Windows/XP/all/reskit/en-us/prkc_f
il_punq.asp



Elijah Landreth [MSFT]
Microsoft Server Setup Team

Search our Knowledge Base at http://support.microsoft.com/directory
Visit the Windows 2000 Homepage at
http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/default.asp
See the Windows NT Homepage at http://www.microsoft.com/ntserver/

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The views and opinions expressed in this newsgroup posting are mine and do
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Microsoft.
or opinions of Microsoft.

 

[philo]

NTFS is always slower than FAT32, due to increased overheads.
For large folders (> 5000 files), NFTS may take twice as long to
access files than FAT32. On the other hand, NFTS is the native
file system for Win2000 and WinXP. I suggest you use it because
of its many other advantages, and keep your folders to a reasonable
size.

http://www.ntfs.com/ntfs_vs_fat.htm

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

http://www.ntfs.com/ntfs_vs_fat.htm

I ran a set of rigourous tests on freshly partitioned and formatted disks.
They showed beyond doubt that NTFS is much slower that FAT32 for
directories with > 5000 entries. The link you quote shows a table that
is very nicely laid out, and it says nothing at all about how

a) exactly the tests were performed;
b) NTFS performs when accessing heavily populated folders.

I will gladly supply my test methodology and test results if you're
interested. This is what peer review is all about: Not just quote some
figures out of thin air but to substantiate them with hard evidence
that others can check out for themselves.

 

[philo]

I ran a set of rigourous tests on freshly partitioned and formatted disks.
They showed beyond doubt that NTFS is much slower that FAT32 for
directories with > 5000 entries. The link you quote shows a table that
is very nicely laid out, and it says nothing at all about how

a) exactly the tests were performed;
b) NTFS performs when accessing heavily populated folders.

I will gladly supply my test methodology and test results if you're
interested. This is what peer review is all about: Not just quote some
figures out of thin air but to substantiate them with hard evidence
that others can check out for themselves.

hey i'm sure you are right...but i ceratinly don't think the >5000 entries
per
folder is going to be that great of a justification for fat32 for most
folks...

 

[Jay Somerset]

If you would be willing to publish your performance data, I, for one, would
be interested in seeing it.

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

With my test I attempted to determine the relative speed when accessing
large subdirectories on FAT32 or NTFS volumes. This was in response
to some posts claiming that NTFS would always outperform FAT32.

Configuration
=========
Operating system: Win2000
Test disk1: 40 GByte Seagate IDE 5400 RPM, connected as the primary slave
Test disk2: 60 GByte Seagate IDE 7200 RPM, connected as the primary slave

Setup
====
1. Remove all partitions on the slave disk.
2. Create a 25 GByte FAT32 or NTFS partition.
3. Format this partition, accepting the default values.
4. Create a directory d:\Source on the test disk.
5. Create 10,000 successively numbered files in d:\Source, each being 1000
bytes in size.
6. Create a file c:\list.txt, containing a randomised list of 1,000 file
names.
7. Step through c:\list.txt to copy each listed file from d:\Source to
d:\Target,
one file at a time.
8. Measure the time required to perform 1000 copy commands, using
timethis.exe.

Results
=====
Seagate 40 GBytes FAT32: 19.8 seconds
Seagate 40 GBytes NTFS: 40.9 seconds
Seagate 60 GBytes FAT32: 17.0 seconds
Seagate 40 GBytes NTFS: 32.8 seconds

Conclusion
========
NTFS is substantially slower than FAT32 when dealing with large
subdirectories. Further measurements suggest that the difference
becomes small for subdirectories with fewer than 1000 entries. They
also suggest that NTFS is always slower than FAT on 25 GByte
partitions, although the difference is barely noticeable for small
subdirectories.

Recommendations
============
- Keep subdirectories to a reasonable size (<1000 entries).
- If you must have large subdirectories, use FAT32.

If you would be willing to publish your performance data, I, for one, would
be interested in seeing it.