Knowing performance bottlenecks with FAT and NTFS on the machine having XP Professional Installed.

[Ramesh]

Hi All,

I have windows XP professional installed on 1.8 MHZ ,128 MB RAM , Petinum 4
machine and i have partitioned for 3 drives ("C , D and E"). With that, i
have installed the XP Professional(OS) on C:\ drive (i.e. NTFS) and all the
application related s/ws i had installed on E:\ drive (i.e. FAT system)

Here is my question on the above setup:

Q1) While using the system for the I/O operations on FAT and NTFS will it
create any performance bottleneck ? , if so , please suggest the alternative
if not, suggest the option for better tunning.

Q2) Since all application s/w's installed on E:\ drive (i.e. FAT) , when
ever i boot the system, the OS (XP) starts scanning the file-system on
entire E:\ drive, I dont know is this the default activity of XP or its just
doing because of FAT ? please suggest.

Q3) For my knowledge purpose, can anyone tell me what actually the
differences between FAT and NTFS partitions.


Any suggestions or solutions would be appreciate !!!!

Thanks,
Ramesh

 

[Sharon F]

Hi All,

I have windows XP professional installed on 1.8 MHZ ,128 MB RAM , Petinum 4
machine and i have partitioned for 3 drives ("C , D and E"). With that, i
have installed the XP Professional(OS) on C:\ drive (i.e. NTFS) and all the
application related s/ws i had installed on E:\ drive (i.e. FAT system)

Here is my question on the above setup:

Q1) While using the system for the I/O operations on FAT and NTFS will it
create any performance bottleneck ? , if so , please suggest the alternative
if not, suggest the option for better tunning.

Q2) Since all application s/w's installed on E:\ drive (i.e. FAT) , when
ever i boot the system, the OS (XP) starts scanning the file-system on
entire E:\ drive, I dont know is this the default activity of XP or its just
doing because of FAT ? please suggest.

Q3) For my knowledge purpose, can anyone tell me what actually the
differences between FAT and NTFS partitions.


Any suggestions or solutions would be appreciate !!!!

Thanks,
Ramesh

Q1) You can find benchmarks and reasons to support either file system. I
suspect that the bottom line in deciding is preference. The largest factor
that swayed me towards using NTFS was the robust nature of the file system.

Q2) Wanting to check the file system of the FAT drive at every startup is
not a normal occurrence on a setup with mixed file systems. If you have an
HP scanner, see this article:
Chkdsk Runs Each Time That You Start Your Computer
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;316506

Also, if your pagefile is on the FAT32 partition try moving it to one of
the NTFS partitions to see if that helps. If you have moved the main
pagefile from C: for whatever reasons, add at least a small one here. It
should be large enough to hold a memory dump (check for size needed in
System properties> Error Reporting).

Q3) Lengthy papers devoted to this topic are available all over the
internet. One here by Dmitrey Mikhailov that I found useful:
http://www.digit-life.com/articles/ntfs/

A difference that I find interesting is how the file systems maintain
changes. FAT monitors "chains of data." NTFS uses a journalling system.
NTFS is more likely to recover gracefully from a bad shutdown. While that
sounds good, repairing damaged NTFS can be difficult. Backup or imaging
software will become your new best friends if they aren't already.

Help and Support outlines many of the differences: security, maximum file
sizes, etc. Search for "NTFS" You will get several results to read over.
Under "Overviews, Articles and Tutorial" you will see a link titled
"Choosing between NTFS, FAT and FAT32."