FAT or NTFS?

  • Thread starter Thread starter JerryD
  • Start date Start date
JerryD

JerryD

New member
Windows 2000 users,

You guys using FAT or NTFS file system?

Does it really matter?

Thanks.
 
I use FAT32 because I run a dual boot system with 98 and 2000. You shouldn't use FAT (aka FAT16) unless you really have to.

W2k's NTFS has some benefits over FAT32 but they're geared towards HDD encryption etc. rather than performance. I did some benchmarking with W2k and FAT32 vs. NTFS and couldn't see any big differences. Use small clusters for your OS/apps drive and large clusters for your Audio drive/partition. Small clusters waste less space when you stor many small files but large clusters increase performance and as the files ar so few and large on your audio drive, the wasted space is neglectible.
 
Thanks

Ola your great. Thanks.

I did use the large clusters for the audio drive like you suggested.

Good information.
 
I did some benchmarking of FAT32 vs Win2k NTFS also, and found FAT32 to perform sligthly better....but I still use NTFS because it offers better file recovery and security (we've got a little home network and I don't need the kids accidentally deleting my life's work, regardless of how pathetic it may be :)

Slackmaster 2000
 
NTFS? I'm not sure if I want to run this anymore.

I loaded Win 2000 and I kept having latency type problems. Skips during recording.

I didn't have this problem with Windows 98. I did however, have a problem with programs crashing in Windows 98.

It looks like the best of both worlds would be to install Windows 2000 and format the drives using the FAT file format.

I'm going to try that today with the same software and see if that fixes the problem.

Thanks guys.
 
Sure

Yeah your right. The only reason I said FAT is becuase Windows 2000 only has two options

FAT32 or NTFS. I have things straight in my own mind, but I will put FAT32 to keep everyone straight.

Thanks.
 
Sheeshh

Ola. Sorry your are correct. I was making the assumption that Win 2000 only used FAT32. I went to format and noticed that the drop down box has FAT and FAT32. Thanks for that tip and saving me some time.
 
I've always had my drives formatted NTFS, but I was wondering can you still stripe your hard drives, etc. in Win2K if you use the FAT32 file system? Also, isn't there a drive size limitation with FAT32? I may be way off base here....just wanted to refresh my memory.

Jerry- I say go with NTFS unless you're going to dual boot. I have a feeling that your problems with latency and skipping are probably OS related (ie 98 vs 2000) not FAT32 vs NTFS. Make sure you have the latest drivers, etc. for your card with 2000.
 
Partitions?

Ola, My data drive is 60GB. Should I partition that into two 30GB drives. Would that help the performance any?
 
The latency problems and skips are definetly not related to whether you have FAT32 or NTFS. I noticed virtually no difference between the two when I did my benchmarking. As gnarled said, make sure you have the latest drives. Also, make sure you have DMA enabled.

As for partition the drive - It won't help the performance but it can be handy to keep your OS/apps and audio files separate. Maybe 10G for OS and apps and 50G for audio. You can always resize the partitions lates with partiiton magic. Best is to have two separate HDDs.

I think the size limit for FAT32 is messured in terrabytes but I'm not sure. No worries anyway. FAT has 2GB as size limit though. If you have two drives, just make one huge partition.
 
Thats right, it was just FAT that had the 2GB limit. :rolleyes:

As far as partitioning, I agree with ola. If you have just one physical drive, you don't really need to partition it, although having separate virtual drives for OS and audio is convenient. If you have more than one physical drive, however, you might want to consider using a RAID 0 configuration (striped) to increase your performance.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top