NTFS or FAT32

[Trust_Not_123]

this is a followup to my past thread about HDD sharing...

http://www.antionline.com/showthread...hreadid=239893

whats the disadvantages of ntfs and fat32. which is better and what will work and what wont work. i know how to convert i just dont know if i want to. can someone give me some insight.

[UKnetSec]

NTFS implements local security i.e. permissions can be set so that only specified local users can have access to files and folders. In FAT32 anyone on the local machine can access anything, the only restrictions you can place are those that you assign when you share the file over the network.

Thats the main difference, check out this link for a more in depth discussion

http://www.anandtech.com/guides/viewfaq.html?i=63

cheers

[mrleachy]

here are a few things that i know of:

Ntfs:
pro's
its more secure
is better for larger drives as it was designed with large drives in mind
is self repairing in some cases
can password protect and encrypt files / folders

con's
can't be read by non-ntfs based o/s's like win '98 or '95 if you have those
less likely to recover files from if they are accidentally deleted, from what ive tried myself

FAT32:
con's
is quite an old system, not really good for large drives over about 20 gig
not very secure compared to ntfs
its based on FAT16 from the DOS days so that has to be bad

pro's
can be read by almost any other o/s, even *nixes can read it fairly easily i think, but i havnt tried it so i cant really tell you my opinion


based on the last post that you made, you probly could have ntfs on both of your drives so your files can be secured by encrypting them in xp pro (i assume you have pro right?)

if you do use encryption make sure you back up your encryption key in case somethin goes very wrong (it happened to me so take my word for it), it is quite secure as the encryption is based on usernames and who is logged in

[Dr_Evil]

Trust_Not_123,

With NTFS you can :-

1) Set Encryption to file and and folders

2) Set quota

3) Set security access

With FAT32 you cant

disadvantages of NTFS

you cant access it using Windows 98,95, 3,1 etc (i.e No good for dual booting )

Dr_Evil

[cgkanchi]

Another thing that the others have failed to mention is that NTFS is (for the most part) slower than fat32 on drives that are smaller than 8 gb (I'm talking about the partition not the physical hard disk). Also, I don't think this applies to you, but the NTFS used on NT 4.0 systems is different from the one used on 2K/XP systems. What I generally tend to do is to make the partition that I install XP/2K on NTFS and the other partitions Fat32 so that I can still read and write to and from my Linux partitions while enjoying the benefits of NTFS on my system drive.
Cheers,
cgkanchi

[x acidreign x]

NTFS is also a more efficient file system, can save space. Also, booting a FAT32 system with a boot disk gives you instant root access. NTFS supports EFS, or Encrypted File System, which allows a user to transparently encrypt files to secure data. no other user logged on to that computer can access the contents of those files.

[Trust_Not_123]

hmm, sounds like an interesting partition format. my hdd is due for a re-format soon so i might try it out

thanks guys

[shadow_dancer]

NTFS is greater than FAT 32.
if u use NTFS you could do anything which can't FAT 32 do. NTFS will recommend using for Networking system ( exm win 2000 adv, 2000 pro, XP, NT 4 or else ) and you can set security easier more than FAT 32.
but guys .. i have a question ?
i ever install NT 4 in ( FAT 16 ) my PC and after that i want to format my hdd using windows 2000 adv cd... but it said that "drive is not accessible" .. i am so confuse. but finally i can format it by using Disk Manager. the question is .. what is FAT 16 ? and why NTFS couldn't detect it ?

regard

[Trust_Not_123]

fat 16 is the more dos earlier version that fat 32. so using fat16 is like using dos.

re-format to fat32 or ntfs (depending on HDD size and os)