FAT32 or NTFS on an external USB disk drive???

[Bo Berglund]

I have just bought an external 250Gb IOMEGA USB disk drive for backup
and data storage purposes. It turns out that it is preformatted with
FAT32.

My question is if I should reformat it to NTFS or if I should start
using it like it is?
Are there any performance or storage capacity issues between FAT32 and
NTFS on external USB disks?


Bo Berglund
bo.berglund(at)nospam.telia.com

 

[R. McCarty]

One limitation is the single/largest size file that can exist on a FAT32
volume which is 4.0 Gigabytes. The reason that drives come from
the factory in a FAT32 format is for different OS use. None of the
Win-9X/ME Operating Systems can mount/use NTFS.
If your external drive will only be used with Windows XP systems
then I'd probably format the drive to NTFS. Alternately, you might
re-partition and leave a portion of the drive in FAT32. Speed wise
you'll not see significant differences between NTFS & FAT32. Most
USB external drives transfer data at a maximum of ~25 Megabytes
per second.

 

[Gene K]

Convert it to the NTFS file system which is the standard for XP. To find out
how to do the conversion: Start/All Programs/Accessories/Command
Prompt/immediately after the blinking cursor, type "convert /?" (minus the
quotation marks) and press the keyboard "Enter" key. This will open a
command help file with some basic instructions plus the switchs that can be
used to acomplish the conversion. Other questions, ask.

--
GeneK
I have just bought an external 250Gb IOMEGA USB disk drive for backup
and data storage purposes. It turns out that it is preformatted with
FAT32.

My question is if I should reformat it to NTFS or if I should start
using it like it is?
Are there any performance or storage capacity issues between FAT32 and
NTFS on external USB disks?


Bo Berglund
bo.berglund(at)nospam.telia.com

 

[Bruce Chambers]

I have just bought an external 250Gb IOMEGA USB disk drive for backup
and data storage purposes. It turns out that it is preformatted with
FAT32.

My question is if I should reformat it to NTFS or if I should start
using it like it is?
Are there any performance or storage capacity issues between FAT32 and
NTFS on external USB disks?


Bo Berglund
bo.berglund(at)nospam.telia.com

Personally, I wouldn't even consider using FAT32 when NTFS is an
option. FAT32 has no security capabilities, no compression
capabilities, no fault tolerance, so support for files larger than 4 Gb
(videos, anyone?), and a lot of wasted hard drive space on volumes
larger than 8 Gb in size. (Just try finding a hard drive that small,
nowadays.) The only reason I can think of to remain with FAT32 would be
if you anticipated a high likelihood of having to connect that external
drive to a Win9x machine. But your computing needs may vary, and there
is no hard and fast answer.

To answer your questions without getting too technical is
difficult, but has been handled quite well by the late 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/

You can safely convert your current hard drive to NTFS whenever
desired, without having to format the partition and reinstall
everything. As always when performing any serious changes, back up any
important data before proceeding, just in case. A little advance
preparation is also strongly recommended, so you can avoid any
performance hits caused by the default cluster size:

Converting FAT32 to NTFS in Windows
http://www.aumha.org/a/ntfscvt.htm


--

Bruce Chambers

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[Guest]

Converting to NTFS is definitely better - but for those who don't play around
with computers that much, it may be better to leave it as FAT32.

This is because, should something happen to your PC or to the drive, the
recovery of the data will be simpler to do on a FAT32 drive. Also, you won't
get the "Access Denied" errors that NTFS frequently generates when you try
and access your recovered data.

But, remember that this is a security risk for your data - so the choice is
yours.

- John

 

[Bo Berglund]

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

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

Thanks, but this is clearly not needed at all. I did mention that I
just bought this 250Gb drive and was now figuring if there are any
advantages at all in keeping FAT32. I usually only have NTFS on my
computers (since 10 years or so)...
So I was not looking for a *conversion*, rather if I should reformat
to NTFS *before* starting to use it...

After reading a few other threads on the NTFS subject I used
ComputerManagement/DiskManagement and formatted the entire disk as
NTFS (with 4k clusters as was recommended in a few posts)
I assume that a fresh format will not introduce the odd boundaries
talked about in the webpage above.

And of course the data I will store are amongst others video files
much larger than 4Gb, so the choice was simple. :=)

Thanks for the comments!


Bo Berglund
bo.berglund(at)nospam.telia.com

 

[Ron Martell]

I assume that a fresh format will not introduce the odd boundaries
talked about in the webpage above.

If your drive was successfully formatted to NTFS with 4K clusters then
it does not have the partition boundary problem mentioned in Alex's
article. If that problem exists the drive will be formatted with 512
byte clusters.

Good luck

Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP (1997 - 2006)
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca
Syberfix Remote Computer Repair

"Anyone who thinks that they are too small to make a difference
has never been in bed with a mosquito."