fat32 conversion to NTFS. will it bring performance increase?

[wrreisen]

Hi,

I'm running XP professional on a system with a 300Gb RAID 1/0 4 disk
IDE array. I have mistakenly formatted it with FAT32. I have been told
that I would get far better performance if it was NTFS. Would I get
this performance increase just by letting XP convert the FAT32 to NTFS
or would I only get a major performance boost by reformatting with NTFS
then reinstalling everything (something that I probably don't have time
to do). I am using the space to store video clips and video image
sequences.

 

[S.Sengupta]

Advantages of Using NTFS
http://tinyurl.com/2qnpt

regards,
ssg MS-MVP

 

[Rick \Nutcase\ Rogers]

Hi,

You can use the XP "convert" command to do this, but you need to align the
partitions first or you will wind up with 512 byte clusters rather than 4K
ones (which is what you want for optimal performance). You will find more on
this here:
http://aumha.org/win5/a/xpvm.htm

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Associate Expert - WindowsXP Expert Zone

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org

 

[S.Sengupta]

To convert a volume to NTFS from the command prompt:-
Open the Command Prompt window.
In the command prompt window, type
convert drive_letter: /fs:ntfs

For example, typing convert D: /fs:ntfs would format drive D: with the
ntfs format.

regards,
ssg MS-MVP

 

[Yves Leclerc]

The only advantage that you will get is the fact that you will be able to
store files larger than 4GB. FAT32 in XP has an imposed file size limit of
4GB.

 

[HeyBub]

Hi,

I'm running XP professional on a system with a 300Gb RAID 1/0 4 disk
IDE array. I have mistakenly formatted it with FAT32. I have been told
that I would get far better performance if it was NTFS. Would I get
this performance increase just by letting XP convert the FAT32 to NTFS
or would I only get a major performance boost by reformatting with
NTFS then reinstalling everything (something that I probably don't
have time to do). I am using the space to store video clips and video
image sequences.

I'm guessing you won't see a performance increase in your situation. In
dealing with a single file at a time, each method is going to load the file
at the same speed.

You'd probably get better results by increasing RAM.

 

[Leythos]

The only advantage that you will get is the fact that you will be able to
store files larger than 4GB. FAT32 in XP has an imposed file size limit of
4GB.

Actually you'll see a gain in less slack space wasted. Depending on the
normal size of the files you can select anything as small as 512bytes to
4k bytes for a cluster size. Depending on your application and your
normal use, cluster size makes a BIG difference in performance.

With Fat32 on a large drive you will be stuck with the largest size
which means that a 1 byte file could consume 16kbytes of space on the
drive.

 

[CFran]

if you want to turn it from fat32 to NTFS without losing data, you can
use PowerQuest PartitionMagic, it will let you do it (among other
things) without any loss of data on the converted partition.

by the way, i dont understand what you mean by :

Would I get
this performance increase just by letting XP convert the FAT32 to NTFS
or would I only get a major performance boost by reformatting with NTFS
then reinstalling everything

im not sure i got what you mean right, but if you think that the way
you will turn it to NTFS matters, well, it wont, all that matters is
that it ends being a NTFS partition

a 300Gb RAID 1/0 4 disk
IDE array

i think you meant I/O, not 1/0

by the way, if you're using that partition for video uses, then yeah
you better turn it to NTFS cuz if i remember good, FAT32 cant handle
files bigger that 4GB (or 2^32 bytes), and in video you easily get to
files bigger than 4GB, and with NTFS, i dont know what the limit is,
maybe 2^64 bytes well anyways that's good enough (i remember having 20
GB files on a NTFS partition...)

 

[Ken Blake]

In

I'm running XP professional on a system with a 300Gb RAID 1/0 4
disk
IDE array. I have mistakenly formatted it with FAT32. I have
been told
that I would get far better performance if it was NTFS. Would I
get
this performance increase just by letting XP convert the FAT32
to NTFS
or would I only get a major performance boost by reformatting
with
NTFS then reinstalling everything (something that I probably
don't
have time to do). I am using the space to store video clips and
video
image sequences.

You asked this question two days ago and I answered it then. The
answer hasn't changed since then. No, you've been told wrong, and
although there are several reasons why converting to NTFS might
be a good idea, improved performance isn't one of them.

 

[R. McCarty]

See the following MS article for more insight into NTFS
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/winpreinst/ntfs-preinstall.mspx