FAT 32 or NTFS?

[shrinka]

Hi! I am a newcomer to this forum. This is going to be a silly question. I am going to buy a notebook for learning some serious software stuff. Is FAT32 file system advisable or NTFS? I prefer to use Windows 2000 rather than Windows XP. I got confused by "override" stuff on Dell website when I tried to configure a Latitude.

 

[Sunner]

NTFS.

 

[drag]

Fat32 for compatablity for other operating systems such as win98 and Linux.

NTFS otherwise. (better performance, more robust)

 

[NuclearFusi0n]

learning some serious software stuff:

ReiserFS

 

[Sunner]

Originally posted by: NuclearFusi0n
learning some serious software stuff:

ReiserFS

I was unaware that Win2K included ReiserFS drivers.

 

[NuclearFusi0n]

Originally posted by: Sunner

Originally posted by: NuclearFusi0n
learning some serious software stuff:

ReiserFS

I was unaware that Win2K included ReiserFS drivers.

learning serious software stuff sounds like linux to me

 

[Sunner]

Originally posted by: NuclearFusi0n

Originally posted by: Sunner

Originally posted by: NuclearFusi0n
learning some serious software stuff:

ReiserFS

I was unaware that Win2K included ReiserFS drivers.

learning serious software stuff sounds like linux to me

Try telling that to the *BSD or Solaris people and see what they have to say about it

 

[Derango]

Originally posted by: Sunner

Originally posted by: NuclearFusi0n

Originally posted by: Sunner

Originally posted by: NuclearFusi0n
learning some serious software stuff:

ReiserFS

I was unaware that Win2K included ReiserFS drivers.

learning serious software stuff sounds like linux to me

Try telling that to the *BSD or Solaris people and see what they have to say about it

Anyway, he's talking about windows, as was obvious from his original post.

NTFS unless you want to dual boot windows and another OS, since I can't think of a non windows OS that can write to NTFS partitions.

 

[Sunner]

Anyway, he's talking about windows, as was obvious from his original post.

Yeah I know, hence the rolleyes

 

[Derango]

Originally posted by: Sunner

Anyway, he's talking about windows, as was obvious from his original post.

Yeah I know, hence the rolleyes

Yea, that was aimed more at NuclearFusi0n

 

[drag]

Like what poor Luke Skywalker has flowing thru his head everytime he visits the Usenet newsgroups:


Stayyy ONNN Topic! STaaaAAAaay onnn topic! STAAAAAY ON TOPIC!!!


NTFS is the premier filing system for Windows. It has all sorts of superior features that FAT32 lacks. Journalling, better recovery, much finer ACLS and all sorts of stuff.


(Of course it's probably quite a bit inferior to some of the numerous choices aviable to linux users, like XFS, JFS, or ReiserFS, but that's immaterial to this discussion. )

 

[fdisk2003]

On a laptop, unless you need it for security reasons or you are a power user I'd be more inclined to go with FAT32. Reason being, if you start experiencing drive trouble you're going to have a heck of a time finding a NTFS boot disk to get on to recover/look at your data. If it's FAT32, you can use any Win98+ Boot disk pretty much. In a desktop you could just hook the drive up as a slave to another system and leech the data over to save it. On a laptop you'll need a special adapter to adapt a laptop HD to run on a desktop system. Much easier to be able to boot from any old Win98 boot disk, imo.

 

[Nothinman]

Win2K and XP have the Recovery Console on the CD for a reason.

FAT is a terrible filesystem, people need to stop using it hell even MS has started deprecating it.

 

[bsobel]

Originally posted by: fdisk2003
On a laptop, unless you need it for security reasons or you are a power user I'd be more inclined to go with FAT32. Reason being, if you start experiencing drive trouble you're going to have a heck of a time finding a NTFS boot disk to get on to recover/look at your data. If it's FAT32, you can use any Win98+ Boot disk pretty much. In a desktop you could just hook the drive up as a slave to another system and leech the data over to save it. On a laptop you'll need a special adapter to adapt a laptop HD to run on a desktop system. Much easier to be able to boot from any old Win98 boot disk, imo.

Please, stop posting bad information (seems to be your theme today)! There is no reason to run FAT. It's horrible, it doesn't recover well, and it's slow and wastefull.
Bill

 

[Twista]

NTFS

 

[vegetation]

. On a laptop you'll need a special adapter to adapt a laptop HD to run on a desktop system. Much easier to be able to boot from any old Win98 boot disk, imo.

Those adapters cost under $10 on ebay, no big deal. Every laptop owner should have one in their toolkit, makes hard drive upgrades a breeze.

 

[fdisk2003]

Please, stop posting bad information (seems to be your theme today)!

Flaming someone when you can't think in more then 2 dimensions seems to be your theme. I am not posting bad information, I'm posting my opinion after experiencing situation(s) in which having NTFS on a laptop did more harm then good. Windows 2000/XP recovery on the CD can and do fail, and when they do you are left with reinstalling 2K/XP over the top, but that wipes out the profile directories. Profile directories that have their DATA in them. Not an option. You can also pull the drive out (impossible for a non technical laptop user in the field) or boot from a disk. Now, which is easier? And finally, at any time he wants in the future he can convert c: /fs:ntfs.

Those adapters cost under $10 on ebay, no big deal. Every laptop owner should have one in their toolkit, makes hard drive upgrades a breeze.

They should be, but not every laptop user is technically saavy enough to use it. Which is, again, why I said a 98 boot disk is easiest, not knowing this guy's technical prowess.

 

[MedicBob]

NTFS all the way with Windows. FAT is not the way to go. Do a search here on it, NTFS vs FAT, there are a significant number of reasons why NTFS is prefferred over FAT.

As far as recovery, if you a playing with software you will break the OS. Just the way it works when playing. If you get concerned about data on the laptop, just have another partition to store data in it.

 

[drag]

Originally posted by: MedicBob
NTFS all the way with Windows. FAT is not the way to go. Do a search here on it, NTFS vs FAT, there are a significant number of reasons why NTFS is prefferred over FAT.

As far as recovery, if you a playing with software you will break the OS. Just the way it works when playing. If you get concerned about data on the laptop, just have another partition to store data in it.

You mean do "backups" for stuff I am afraid to lose???? OMG, so CD burners aren't just for stealing music after all!

(Not that I actually do anything as alien as "backups" on any of my personal computers.)

 

[Sunner]

Yeah backups are for cowards!

Im too lazy, but then, I don't keep much important stuff on my home computers, the only thing I backup regularly are the /etc of my *NIX boxes.

 

[prosaic]

Originally posted by: fdisk2003

Please, stop posting bad information (seems to be your theme today)!

Flaming someone when you can't think in more then 2 dimensions seems to be your theme. I am not posting bad information, I'm posting my opinion after experiencing situation(s) in which having NTFS on a laptop did more harm then good. Windows 2000/XP recovery on the CD can and do fail, and when they do you are left with reinstalling 2K/XP over the top, but that wipes out the profile directories. Profile directories that have their DATA in them. Not an option. You can also pull the drive out (impossible for a non technical laptop user in the field) or boot from a disk. Now, which is easier? And finally, at any time he wants in the future he can convert c: /fs:ntfs.

1. Data located on NTFS partitions is far less likely to be rendered inaccessible than data on FAT partitions.
2. Windows 2000/XP CDs and their recovery options are less likely to fail than a boot floppy.
3. Users, and particularly tech support people, need to learn to use the correct tools for their given operating systems and file systems. NTFS recovery tools work.
4. Continuing to try to use DOS-based boot disks for recovering data from systems that can no longer boot from the hard drive is just silly these days. Getting long path and file names off intact under such circumstances is something that an end user is not likely to be able to do. It's certainly just as hard to do this as it is to connect the hard drive to another machine using an laptop-to-desktop adaptor.
5. There are many more options than you state there are when dealing with a problematic drive or partition. Parallel installations come to mind. I've never seen that technique fail to fully recover data unless a) the drive was mechanically kaput, or b) the data being recovered was encrypted using EFS and no keys/certificates had been saved.
6. Using CONVERT on a FAT drive to change the file sytem to NTFS doesn't always work so well. If the partition is crowded it won't work. If the partition was not set up and formatted using the built-in WinXP partitioning utilities the conversion will probably result in 512 byte cluster sizes. That results in comparatively poor file system performance when compared to operating with the 4 kilobyte cluster size.

- prosaic

 

[bsobel]

Flaming someone when you can't think in more then 2 dimensions seems to be your theme.

The problem is your answering posts and the information your posting is plain wrong.

I'm posting my opinion after experiencing situation(s) in which having NTFS on a laptop did more harm then good.

Great, shall I post my thousand's of stories about how FAT is worse than NTFS? I know a bit about these file systems and we can break them down if we must.

Windows 2000/XP recovery on the CD can and do fail, and when they do you are left with reinstalling 2K/XP over the top, but that wipes out the profile directories. Profile directories that have their DATA in them. Not an option. You can also pull the drive out (impossible for a non technical laptop user in the field) or boot from a disk. Now, which is easier? And finally, at any time he wants in the future he can convert c: /fs:ntfs.

The user is more likely to lose data in the first place running FAT.

Bill

 

[Fuzznuts]

Originally posted by: bsobel

Flaming someone when you can't think in more then 2 dimensions seems to be your theme.

The problem is your answering posts and the information your posting is plain wrong.

I'm posting my opinion after experiencing situation(s) in which having NTFS on a laptop did more harm then good.

Great, shall I post my thousand's of stories about how FAT is worse than NTFS? I know a bit about these file systems and we can break them down if we must.

Windows 2000/XP recovery on the CD can and do fail, and when they do you are left with reinstalling 2K/XP over the top, but that wipes out the profile directories. Profile directories that have their DATA in them. Not an option. You can also pull the drive out (impossible for a non technical laptop user in the field) or boot from a disk. Now, which is easier? And finally, at any time he wants in the future he can convert c: /fs:ntfs.

The user is more likely to lose data in the first place running FAT.

Bill

yeah well my bike is faster than both of yours and my dad can beat up your dad



sorry couldnt resist

 

[bsobel]

yeah well my bike is faster than both of yours and my dad can beat up your dad

Since I'm harping on people posting facts, your doing well so far Your bike would appear to be faster than mine (I have a pair of F4i's, I suspect your 750 would pull away nicely in the straightaways). As for your dad, we'll have to see, when is he available for a match

sorry couldnt resist

Neither could I!
Bill

 

[fdisk2003]

(Insert your replies here)

What I said was:

On a laptop, unless you need it for security reasons or you are a power user I'd be more inclined to go with FAT32.

An IT person/administrator could also be considered a power user. Obviously a power user has the knowledge and resources to maintain NTFS, so they'd go with NTFS.

I was talking about nontechnical users in the field, however. A nontechnical user would have access to the knowledge through a telephone call to their IT department. They won't have access to the tools such as adapters, unless you intend on making every corporate VIP carry around a tool kit. They may not have their backups with them. Even if they physically have everything they need to perform the operation they may not even have the time and/or patience to deal with it over the telephone! Which is, again, why I said a simple boot disk is often the easiest solution. Elegant, no. Easy, yes. It gets them on the system and gives them access to their data. They can be told how to copy their document onto flopp(ies) and go stick it in a different computer and do their presentation, meeting, or whatever.