formatting harddrive NTFS or FAT32!!

[matmum]

hi

can anyone tell me what the best format is for my harddrive (i.e. NTFS or FAT32) - i was planning to install win xp pro but would like to know before i start installation.

thnx
matt

[Siliconjunkie]

NTFS is the only way to go. Only catch is that it can be a bit harder to recover from disaster, but the benifits far outweigh that. Security and EFS are the 2 big things you gain along with larger volume sizes.

[Telexen]

There will be people that tell you FAT32 is faster...that's not necessarily true...FAT32 is a waste on NT based systems IMO.

[DoctorReno]

Yepper on NTFS. Unless you intend on dual booting with a 9x OS also, you will really want to use NTFS.

[thekingofpain]

NTFS = New Technology File System---when installing XP it only makes sense...

NTFS for the OS/applications. FAT32 for data only because in case of disaster you can boot from a floppy and access it. Of course you can access NTFS brom a boot disk too but you need another small utility to see NTFS partitions from DOS.

[darrelld]

there are a few reasons to keep FAT32, they all involve the fact that a Win9x computer can't read an NTFS partition. If you have network that needs to be accessed by a 9x machine, then you need to keep FAT32.
I have a WinME machine that needs access to files on a WinXP machine. What I do is create a Fat 32 partition for all the files that need to be shared, and keep XP and everything else on an NTFS partition.

There are also partitions for Linux, but they don't show in XP

[originel]

basically like these guys have said...if you're going to dual boot with win9x or linux AND you want to be able to see your data on your XP partition in 9x/linux then go with Fat32. other than that go with NTFS.

as for running into troubles IMO i think that's an unfounded worry. if you're using XP then there really isn't a reason to go into DOS (especially from a bootdisk) anyways. also NTFS holds up MUCH better than fat32. you remember those "your hard drive needs to be checked for errors" windows gives you if you don't shut it down properly? those don't happen with NTFS cause it can handle those problems just fine. so i wouldn't worry about having problems with it.

Well, if you have a NTFS and keep your data in the default My Documents folder, and there is a corruption or virus or whatever, then you can't access the data. That's what I meant.

But, yes, NTFS is far less prone to errors and far more stable.

[originel]

If you have network that needs to be accessed by a 9x machine, then you need to keep FAT32.

???

last time i checked it doesn't matter what type of file system you have for network access cause the type of file system doesn't affect the actual data stored in the file, just the way the OS interacts with it. also when going over a network it is "translated" into NFS (or whatever windows equivalent is) anyway. it only matters if you are running 9x on that specific machine

oh and yeah your right shahani. sorry i misunderstood you on that one. PS i would recommend not using the my documents anyway since that folder is more prone to viruses.