19th October 2001
Ah, so you've finally decided to give Windows XP a whirl? Whether we like it or not, the OS will be pre-installed on just about every new machine that comes off of the assembly line. If you're taking a valid upgrade path, you're going to face a tough decision soon: FAT32 or NTFS? The installation routine will ask you if you want to change your file system. If you're unsure, stick with FAT32. You can always convert at a later time within Windows XP. Anyway, let's go over some pros and cons, shall we? FAT32 was the successor to FAT (FAT16), which enabled newer, larger hard drives to be recognized by DOS / Windows. It also shrank cluster sizes considerably. This particular number depends on the overall size of the drive (virtual or not); the smaller the cluster, the less hard drive space is wasted. Have you ever right-clicked on a file, see that it weighs in at a measly 523 bytes, but it takes up a whopping 32 kilobytes?! That's due to the drive's large cluster size, most likely on a large hard disk which hasn't been partitioned into (smaller) virtual drives. Just one of the reasons why Partition Magic is a dream come true for those who want to get the most out of their hard drive(s).
FAT32 is also unsecure; true encryption can't take place at the system level. NTFS, on the other hand, not only boasts smaller cluster sizes, but it also allows you to set permissions for any file or folder on your drive(s). You don't want your daughter messing with anything in this folder? Done. Don't want your husband to see this file? Done. But, again, this is only for those using NTFS. Sounds great, doesn't it? Yeah, it's awesome - but it's also slower than FAT32. The difference isn't supremely noticeable, but there's definitely a slight performance tradeoff. To tell you the truth, most - if not all - of my problems with the two hard drives in my system disappeared when I formatted them (non-destructively) to NTFS. I haven't looked back. Might wanna double-check your third-party system tools to make sure they'll work on something other than FAT. And before you ask, yes... NTFS drives can interact with FAT32 drives. Furo compresses his MP3 collection because they don't need to be read very quickly from the disk in order to play well, and it saves him at least some space. He'd never compress any database files or other data that depends on faster read / write performance. There are actually some situations where a slow disk and fast processor can result in slightly faster performance when reading / writing compressed data. This is because the data is read from the disk in smaller chunks, then decompressed by the fast processor.