FAT32 or NTFS?

Filed By: Robert Moir

FAT32 or NTFS?

Introduction

The first section of this article was written 11 months ago at the end of March 2002. I'm re-reading and updating it to incorporate some comments I have had about it over time, and I'm pleased to see that what I wrote pretty much stands the test of time. Well except for my usual grammer and spelling mistakes.

What file system should I use for my computer?

One question that is frequently asked by new Windows 2000 and Windows XP users is "Should I format my drives as FAT32 or NTFS?"

Now my personal thoughts about using each filesystem with Win XP based on what I know about NTFS and FAT are that for me, NTFS holds the lead but really it doesn't matter. I've been working with NT and win 2000 server for years so I'm quite used to NTFS so I'm quite comfortable with it.

For most users, I don't think it really matters. There are some features you can only get with one file system or another, but if you don't need to use any feature that's only available with one file system or the other I don't really think it matters.

FAT of course is required on at least some of your partitions if you wish to dual boot with DOS, Windows 98, ME, and possibly other operating systems too, because these do not "speak" NTFS and you need a common ground. Some people want to stick with FAT because they are comfortable with it. Of course that's not a hard and fast requirement but it is an issue. Lastly, old disk utilities may require FAT based disks. I think anyone who runs an older based disk utility under Windows XP is asking for trouble but there ya go.

I've not found any application or game software that requires FAT partitions, which a lot of people think is an issue. Maybe they are right, but I myself have never ever seen this phenomena. There are some games that require the NTFS security settings to be tweaked to run on an NTFS system, and of course that isn't an issue on FAT based systems, but again this isn't a hard requirement for FAT file systems, just that you get a shortcut if you do use FAT.

NTFS is required if you wish to take advantage of security features to control who can see or change what on your hard disks, encrypt your files without 3rd party software, compress them natively, or work efficiently with very very large partitions. I'm leaving aside the stuff about NTFS being more fault tolerant and less likely than FAT to mess files up because while I'm quite sure it's true, its a rather vague concept to grasp for someone who isn't too experienced. with file systems.

I think once home users get used to Windows XP they will get interested in NTFS because they will realise that the security features are helpful even on a home machine - parents may wish to keep the family accounts files in MS Money or Quicken away from the kids eyes, and certainly from being accidentally deleted by the kids. You can't do that with a FAT based system.

As Time Goes By

It's interesting to look back over the time XP has put the choice between NTFS and FAT32 into the hands of consumers and see  how little has changed, and what few "gotchas" have emerged to make choices clearer. I originally wrote the stuff above as a reply to a question in a newsgroup and modified it to include on the website. Despite this site and many other better articles about the choice being available on the web, this question is still being asked in those same newsgroups.

At the time of writing, I'd have to say that no major bugs that I know of have been found with NTFS on Windows XP. I've seen debates about which file system is faster, and I'm still not convinced that you'll ever see a real difference between NTFS and FAT32 disk speeds in the real world for day to day "lightweight" games playing, balancing the bank accounts in quicken, and writing the odd letter in Word or Star Office.

I'd have to say that if you don't need the security features of NTFS, the choice should be based how large your hard disk partitions are. Once you get past the 30GB mark for a disk partition I think NTFS does tend to be slightly faster and in my experience it handles lots of concurrent file operations better than Fat. For a system with a smaller hard disk and maybe more modest useage, FAT32 will probably continue to do just fine if that is what you are using.

If you want to work with very large files such as sound or graphic files, or do a lot of database work or anything  else similar to those things then you should certainly be looking at NTFS. As most people doing work with large files tend also to have large disks, you should already be looking at NTFS for those reasons.

One area where you might want to consider bucking the trend and using FAT32 for larger disks is with removable storage. Those USB and Firewire external hard disks that are becoming popular right now are a good argument for continuing to use FAT32. You never know when you might be swapping these disks onto a machine running Windows 98 or ME or even a Mac - and all of these systems can talk to FAT32 quite easily but won't be too impressed with NTFS. Unless you are certain you will never need to move this disk from one system to another leave it formatted as FAT32.

This brings me on to a "Gotcha" for file systems and large external hard drives. Windows 2000 and Windows XP can only format 32GB or smaller partitions when using FAT32. Reading any partiton size formatted in FAT32, no problem. Again writing to it is no problem. Formatting, however - well 32GB is your limit. This means that if you decide to format your external drive as NTFS on a XP system, and later need to re-format it as Fat32 to transfer a 35GB database file or your movie masterpiece to a friend's iMac... Well you can't.

Probably won't affect many people. But if you are one of the few that one will be quite annoying. And none of us saw it coming.

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