NTFS better than FAT32?

[JetLinus]

I always thought, that for some reason NTFS was more sophisticated and better than FAT32, so I chose it for my XP installation.
But now I am getting more and more annoyed with it...

I just tried to delete some locked files (a setup program crashed and I had to reset) in pure "DOS Mode", and I found out that the XP Recovery Console is nothing but a bad joke. You can only access root- and system-folders. And the DEL-Command doesn't accept wildcards... PFFFF!
Then I found my Super-Utilities 2002 CD, and used a little tool called "NTFSPro" to access the NTFS partitions. But, for some reason, it would only mount the primary partition C:, and I needed D:.

So apart from my problems with accessing NTFS in "pure DOS", what are the advantages of it?
Which is faster, NTFS or FAT32?
And why do we even have NTFS?

*grmml*

[Luckeh!!!!]

Advantages over FAT32 would be, more secure, the details of that you'd have to look up though because I don't know the exact specfics.

NTFS allows smaller clusters (4kb or something)

NTFS is, on paper, slightly slower, but real world difference is hard to notice.

FAT32 allows only a maximum of 32gb as a single partition (on WinXP, other OSes you might be able to have larger partitions)

And since there are massive HDDs available, that would explain the *need*

[NEWSBOT3]

Originally posted by Luckeh!!!!


FAT32 allows only a maximum of 32gb as a single partition

so, this 34 gig fat32 drive im using cant exist then ?

[Ramihyn]

Technically fat32 is a crappy blowup of a aged miniature filesystem originally done for disks (not hard-disks - floppy disks). The changes from fat16 to fat32 where a additional backup bootsector and having a main directory which isnt fixed in size anymore. Because of lineary blowing up the FAT entries from 16 to 32bit, you have now rather long FAT's which either take up a lot space in RAM, or need to be (re-)loaded from disk during normal operation.

NTFS is technically way more advanced and not comparable with the FAT filesystems (it's like comparing DOS to WinXP). It includes compression, encryption, quota, dynamic "clusters", streams, directory indexes (btree'd like HPFS), disk spanning, dynamic resizing, a powerful FS-Filter system, much better recoverabilty from crashes and more like journaling. By far not all possibilities of NTFS are currently used, people barely use Streams (though they are "old" in NTFS) and FS-Filters could provide many new functions in the future. Needless to mention that NTFS is based on 64bit elements (though often only 48bit are used), so it is ready for much larger disks.

From the pure technical viewpoint of filesystems, going from FAT16 to FAT32 was complete crap.

Practically, fat16/fat32 may give you better performance in some occasions (like linearly storing huge files for video capturing while the partition is either defragmented or empty), but in general - with XP - use NTFS.

The main advantage of FAT16/32 is that they are very well known (therefore you get more "mature" tools for them in case of troubles) and that they are more compatible - as NTFS is a bit complex to support (and M$ keeps adding/using new functions with each OS release and sometimes with new servicepacks even).

Unless you need FAT32 for compatibility (or very special cases like video capturing and your hardware is close to its limits) - use NTFS.

[Luckeh!!!!]

Originally posted by NEWSBOT3
so, this 34 gig fat32 drive im using cant exist then ?

Are you using WinXP? If not, you can go higher than 32gb per partition with FAT32.

I should have mentioned WinXP... :|

[NEWSBOT3]

Originally posted by Luckeh!!!!
Are you using WinXP? If not, you can go higher than 32gb per partition with FAT32.

I should have mentioned WinXP... :|

no, i just format my own filesystems.
letting win2k do it would be silly. as

In Windows 2000, you can format a FAT32 volume only up to 32 GB.

anyway, take a look at this
and
this

for a decent comparison of the two.

oh, and encryption isnt actually part of the NTFS spec. google for it if your that bothered.

personally i think NTFS is a **** filesystem, and i'd much rather use fat32.

[Ramihyn]

Originally posted by NEWSBOT3
oh, and encryption isnt actually part of the NTFS spec. google for it if your that bothered.

For the end user - it is - even if EFS is "just a tightly integrated component of later NTFS versions" (based on FS filters?).

[meglamaniac]

Originally posted by JetLinus

<snip>

What are the advantages?
To sum it up, FAT (16 or 32) will hapily write off the contents of your harddisk if you turn off the power to the machine with a file still open, never mind what it can do in a serious crash.
It takes a lot of battering to screw anything up under NTFS, and even then the damage is limited to a very small area and is usually recoverable.
My current master partition is NTFS. Its about a year and a half old, and during that time it's been through power failures, me randomly doing stupid stuff like tripping over the power lead while ripping MP3s, a couple of system crashes (thankfully this machine is nearly impossible to crash), access via linux (notoriously dodgy), and has actually resided on 3 different physical drives (it was directly replicated each time I moved it so it's the same partition and filestructure still).
There are no errors on it.

As for your little complaint about the recovery console, here's the operation you need to do. It's slightly longer than normal but I'm sure you can follow it:
1) Start -> Settings -> Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Local Security Policy -> Local Policies -> Security Options -> Recovery Console: Allow floppy copy and access to all drives and all folders <- Enabled
2) Boot to console, log in, and type:
3) set AllowAllPaths=true

Have fun now.

[Luckeh!!!!]

Originally posted by NEWSBOT3
no, i just format my own filesystems.
letting win2k do it would be silly. as


anyway, take a look at this
and
this

for a decent comparison of the two.

oh, and encryption isnt actually part of the NTFS spec. google for it if your that bothered.

personally i think NTFS is a **** filesystem, and i'd much rather use fat32.

So what are you saying? Even though the MS site says max partition size for FAT32 with Win2k + WinXP (plus similar OSes) is 32gb but you can exceed this anyway?

I use Fdisk to do my partition sizes, then WinXP to format with NTFS or FAT32.

But if you use WinXP/Win2k install program to do everything it restricts you? wtf is the point in that /me slaps M$

[MT]

From win2k onwards, MS wanted to encourage people to not use FAT32, so they restricted the maximum size you could format to 32 gb.

If NTFS ****s up seriously, or (more likely) windows ****s up severely, theres not right much you can do to recover from it. With FAT32, you can pick your tool.

I have 3 HD's in this computer - two are fully formatted as NTFS and used as data drives. One is split into three - I have a 5 GB system/programs drive on FAT32, a 5 GB FAT32 hidden 'backup drive' which allows me to 'fix' any windows stuff in under twenty minutes, and a 20GB NTFS data partition.

[NEWSBOT3]

Originally posted by Luckeh!!!!
So what are you saying? Even though the MS site says max partition size for FAT32 with Win2k + WinXP (plus similar OSes) is 32gb but you can exceed this anyway?

I use Fdisk to do my partition sizes, then WinXP to format with NTFS or FAT32.

But if you use WinXP/Win2k install program to do everything it restricts you? wtf is the point in that /me slaps M$

no, the MS site says maxium FORMAT size, not partition size.
fdisking it then using format.com still works for any size up to 2TB iirc.

i'm a DOS whore, i do as much through the command line as possible. Reduces the chance that windows can **** up.


MS in trying to force you to use their newer system shocker!

[Pilatus]

Advantages of NTFS is encryption, permissions and quotas, but that's compared to fat and fat32.

But, i can't see any reasons that it should be better then Index or Ext3, except Microsoft propoganda.

[Androme]

Google search result
If you have no intention of dual booting your machine to another OS then by all means convert to NTFS. If you want to dual boot then any partition that you want to install another OS like any win9x or linux you must not convert those partitions to NTFS as you will not be able to install either on an NTFS partition. Hope this is not too confusing to you.

I'm on FAT32 on my XP machine and quite frankly - it's quite crap but it can be good.

As megla was saying, if you have a file open, it's likely to screw the file up - how many bloody times has it deleted a game save or corrupted my DesktopX theme - fs... FAT32 has caused GetRight to be unrepairable fs...

I've stuck with it because since I upgraded my gfx drivers to 40.72 (I shouldn't have but the recodmended 30.2x or somein for my GeForce2 64mb still made crashes down to my gfx driver) my PC has only crashed twice (compared to 3 times a day - 2 times in last 4 months is not bad methinks)

*** A QUESTION *** - before I do CONVERT C: /FS:NTFS (google search result) , will any of my files be deleted? will I have to format my hdd and lose all my files? how would I be able to restore my PC in the event of an f*up? MT said there's not much I can do ... ?

[meglamaniac]

Pilatus, it's fairly obvious we're comparing filesystems available to Windows users here so the various *nix etc ones don't really figure (although personally if I could make one of those systems work with windows, it would be XFS).

Convert does exactly what it says on the tin - it converts the drive (hence the files and folders) to NTFS, so no you won't lose any files.
In the case of a complete tits-up with NTFS you are very limited in what you can do to recover from it. However, such a situation is very rare.
NTFS is much more resiliant than FAT (turning your PC off in the middle of ripping a CD, for example, would probably just make the CD rip unusable forcing you to delete it and start again. The chances of anything else getting damaged are slim), and has the ability to recover from relatively trivial errors easily.
NTFS is also bright enough to store it's backup of the MFT a good distance away from the original, so unlike FAT, if the original gets written off it's more than likely the backup has survived and will be used to recover the original. With FAT if the original got screwed (for example in a powerspike), the backup sits right next to it - so go figure what's likely to happen there.

There are some limitations when using convert which you should probably be aware of. Rather than explain them myself, I'm going to commit a breach of copyright and paste the windows help documentation.

Syntax
convert [volume] /fs:ntfs [/v] [/cvtarea:FileName] [/nosecurity] [/x]

Parameters
volume
Specifies the drive letter (followed by a colon), mount point, or volume name to convert to NTFS.
/fs:ntfs
Required. Converts the volume to NTFS.
/v
Specifies verbose mode, that is, all messages will be displayed during conversion.
/cvtarea:FileName
For advanced users only. Specifies that the Master File Table (MFT) and other NTFS metadata files are written to an existing, contiguous placeholder file. This file must be in the root directory of the file system to be converted. Use of the /CVTAREA parameter can result in a less fragmented file system after conversion. For best results, the size of this file should be 1 KB multiplied by the number of files and directories in the file system, however, the convert utility accepts files of any size.
For more information about using the /cvtarea parameter, see "File Systems" at the Microsoft Windows XP Resource Kits Web site.(http://www.microsoft.com/)

Important

You must create the placeholder file using the fsutil file createnew command prior to running convert. Convert does not create this file for you. Convert overwrites this file with NTFS metadata. After conversion, any unused space in this file is freed. For more information about the fsutil file command, see Related Topics.
/nosecurity
Specifies that the converted files and directory security settings are accessible by everyone.
/x
Dismounts the volume, if necessary, before it is converted. Any open handles to the volume will no longer be valid.
Remarks
You must specify that the drive should be converted when the computer is restarted. Otherwise, you cannot convert the current drive.
If convert cannot lock the drive (for example, the system volume or the current drive), it offers to convert the drive the next time the computer restarts.
The location of the MFT is different on volumes that have been converted from previous version of NTFS, so volume performance might not be as good on volumes converted from Windows NT.
Volumes converted from FAT to NTFS lack some performance benefits compared to volumes initially formatted with NTFS. On converted volumes, the MFT might become fragmented. In addition, on converted boot volumes, NTFS permissions are not applied after the volume is converted.

[Ramihyn]

Originally posted by meglamaniac
NTFS is also bright enough to store it's backup of the MFT a good distance away from the original, so unlike FAT, if the original gets written off it's more than likely the backup has survived and will be used to recover the original. With FAT if the original got screwed (for example in a powerspike), the backup sits right next to it - so go figure what's likely to happen there.

One version gets corrupted while the backup copy is ok?
Thats what will happen - it's not like a powerspike trashes a whole track of a hard disk and even if it would - a single FAT usually covers several tracks (one of the downsides of fat32 actually - the tremendous size of a single fat). We aren't talking about headcrashes here?

There are several problems with FAT, but the second copy backup solution is working rather well.

Btw. there are important structures in NTFS like the MFT which basically have no backup copy (beside the first 2/4k mirror). You can ofc. reconstruct the MFT since the information is redundant - but is there any tool which actually can reconstruct a complete MFT?

[meglamaniac]

It doesn't have to trash a whole track - merely 2 adjacent sectors.

[Androme]

convert C: /fs:ntfs /cvtarea ..?

what's this cvtarea, MFT & fsutil about? (in uncomplex terms plz thanks)

[meglamaniac]

In simple terms?
Don't need to bother with the second switch.

[Androme]

Originally posted by meglamaniac
In simple terms?
Don't need to bother with the second switch.

so the original "convert C: /fs:ntfs" will suit me just fine in command prompt?

here goes nothing...

[meglamaniac]

have fun

[Deathjam]

umm

with fat32 xp crashed all teh time

with NTFS xp hasn't crashed yet

so figure

[Androme]

Originally posted by Deathjam
with fat32 xp crashed all teh time

with NTFS xp hasn't crashed yet

depends - FAT32 only crashed on my machine due to my gfx driver - when I updated it to drivers not recoddmended my pc became fine which is odd... :\

Good sides to my conversion just now:

FAT32 to NTFS - took less than 10 mins, free'ed up 1GB of HDD space and my machines boot process is twice as quick as it was before (I've restarted again to test the quickness and it was the same..!!!)

Bad sides:

My RAM is being eaten up. - services.exe process is now taking anything up to 80% of my RAM and it's leaving me with 5-15MB of RAM and only 10-15% of my memory free - wtf?! Usually I have 80MB of RAM free and 70%+ of memory free. Closing all processes other than ie: trayserver & explorer.exe I have 35-37MB RAM free & 15% of memory free - why has this conversion meant my RAM is being eaten twice as much?

[meglamaniac]

Not sure - how much ram do you have?
Try disabling the indexing service for the drive (bring up the drive properties and it should be a tickbox on the first page).

[Luckeh!!!!]

personally, FAT32 is fine for me, it has crashed once in the 3months that I've had winXP but that wasn't OS related.

As for boot up time, I get 28 seconds, uber fast in my view, I can't see NTFS going any faster than that.

Androme2, head over the http://www.blackviper.com follow some of his services tweaks and see if that helps.

[Mong]

Let me just state that I simply fail to see any benefit at all of using Fat32 over NTFS.

None.

Nada.

It's Just Silly.

[CjC]

Originally posted by Mong
Let me just state that I simply fail to see any benefit at all of using Fat32 over NTFS.

None.

Nada.

It's Just Silly.

NTFS is really only beneficial to Server systems.

FAT(12/16/32) stores the file table at the beginning of the disk. NTFS does not use this logic, so disk reads are faster - because the links between fragmented data are stored at the data, not at the beginning of the disk.

NTFS also stores files with Windows Security measures - something you cant do with FAT formatted disks. This again is beneficial to a Server Networked environment.

Microsoft did not envision home users needing these requirements - so home users are meant to use FAT formatted disks.

[meglamaniac]

I think you'll find that if you run a default install of XP it will format the drive using NTFS.
These days, home machines ARE servers (allthough low end ones) with all the filesharing that goes on. When the DC hub comes online at 6pm here, I regularly have uploads of 10Gb or so in a few hours, and a fair bit of download depending on what I decided to get (if anything).
I wouldn't trust FAT to get the job done, it is truely **** at handling big files and some of the files whizzing up the pipe off this machine (often at a megabyte/sec or more) are over a gig.

Of course, having 7200RPM drives helps enourmously too.

I also use the security permissions of NTFS because I have certain parts of my machine open to guest users over Network Neighbourghood so I'm very careful about the permissions that the Guest has. By default windows frequently allows either <machinename>\Users or even Everybody to access folders, which ain't too secure.
I never really understood why XP tries to hide the security settings (they're not available except at the command prompt until you disable "simple filesharing" or whatever the hell it calls it).

[pablissimo]

Originally posted by CjC
NTFS is really only beneficial to Server systems.

FAT(12/16/32) stores the file table at the beginning of the disk. NTFS does not use this logic, so disk reads are faster - because the links between fragmented data are stored at the data, not at the beginning of the disk.

NTFS also stores files with Windows Security measures - something you cant do with FAT formatted disks. This again is beneficial to a Server Networked environment.

Microsoft did not envision home users needing these requirements - so home users are meant to use FAT formatted disks.

There's no reason why NTFS isn't a good system for a home user, even if it wasn't designed with them in mind: the design goals when creating the NTFS format apply to both home and server users.

Your home user is just as likely to 'try' and corrupt data by turning off the power/resetting mid-sentence when Clippit asks them if they're writing a letter for the 800th time, they're more likely to induce a power-cut by accidentally unplugging the pc while hoovering or tripping over a cable, and they're more likely to install software that is less reliable/well tested than you would in a server environment. The robustness of NTFS is surely a good way for the home user to go.

Add to that the fact that physical disks are constantly getting larger, in both the home and work arenas: you can pick up a good quality 7200rpm 80gig hdd for about £70-80. NTFS handles larger disks much more efficiently than FAT, another advantage that won't be entirely lost on the home user, whether they notice it or not.

There are no significant disadvantages to using NTFS for a home user, which is probably why it is, as Megla says, the default option when you do a clean install of XP.

[Luckeh!!!!]

WinXP gave me a choice of what to do (FAT32/NTFS/Quick format/Thorough format), and didn't really force me to choose anything.

[meglamaniac]

When you do a clean install (ie. boot off the CD to a blank and/or unpartitioned drive) once the partition has been made (if necessary) the option selected is "Format using NTFS".
"Quick format using NTFS" is below that, "Format using FAT32" below that, and "Quick format using FAT32" below that - fairly obvious which one they want you to use as anyone who isn't sure is just going to trust to Microsoft (heh) and hit enter.

Not that I've installed XP a few times or anything....

[Androme]

thnx l & m

m: I have 256mb of pc133 sdram

while I must admit, my boot process takes less than 10 seconds on my machine (seriously) compared to the 25 seconds average it took with FAT32 (not to mention my extra 1GB HDD given as I said earlier) - this RAM eating problem is annoying

funnily enough, if I open up Photoshop and then close it, my RAM free goes from 15% back to the original % I had with FAT32, and the same with RAM amount (80MB as I had with FAT32)

the problem is - why is Photoshop clearing up my ram eating problem since the NTFS conversion? according to my startup processes, there's no change between and after the conversion so... ?

[meglamaniac]

Open task manager and sort the process list according to ram use.
Give us the top 5 process names and the ammount of ram they are using.

[Androme]

By Mem Usage:

Name __ [User Name] __ Mem Usage

explorer.exe [Mark] 21,212 K
iexplore.exe [Mark] 19,064 K
DesktopX.exe [Mark] 17,940k ___ style xp alternative ...
svchost.exe [SYSTEM] 17,472 K
zapro.exe [Mark] 7,128 K ___ firewall ...

By CPU Usage right now (photoshop not opened yet):

System Idle Process: 87%
System: 9%
Tray Server: 1%
explorer.exe: 1%
iexplore: 1%

RAM: 28% free & 70MB RAM free

***NOTE: these are after tweaks from that blackviper site that luckeh posted***

seems ok after those tweaks - only problem left is the "ram % free" - task mngr says 87% should be free

[meglamaniac]

I'm not quite seeing where you're getting the ram % from (where is it in task manager?).
Bear in mind windows treats ram to mean physical AND virtual memory (ie. the Commit Charge for me atm is 246M/994M although I have only 512Mb ram) so the 'Available' total under Physical Memory (259,740k for me atm) may not be the same as your total free 'ram'.

[Luckeh!!!!]

If you click on the *performance* tab it shows *Physical Memory (K)* somewhere, and androme manually calculated it

But Androme, something is quite amiss with your machine... hmm...

top 5 of most mem hungry processes I got open now are

SVCHOST.EXE @ 15,476K
EXPLORER.EXE @ 13,204K

the next 3 are MSIE windows and mIRC, 6th is taskmgr.exe itself, everything below it is small...

Btw, does your system process always take up 9% of your cpu usage? On mine its always 0% and only used 3 seconds out of 20mins since boot up.

[Androme]

for my results I clicked on the Processes tab n Windows Task Manager (XP Pro)

the thing is, my system process changes - one minute it's 7%, then next it's 1%, then 1% then 6% etc. -

here's a screenshot of my processes & performances (these seem to vary every sec -> CPU Usage etc.)

http://members.lycos.co.uk/muuhh/screen.gif

[meglamaniac]

Yes the CPU usage should be up and down - it depends what's using it at the time it's updated.
Your commit charge is a bit higher than I'd expect mine to be if I'd just restarted the machine, but that depends what you've got running I've been up 4 hours and have been playing various games etc, and my commit charge is 221Mb.
Its peak is 615Mb, which was presumably while I was playing one of my games.

[Androme]

thanks for all your help (-:

still the actual loading when windows has opened up is slower than FAT32 which is annoying :\ suppose the faster boot process makes up for that (-:

btw - can I ask if the freed up space by the conversion -> were files compressed? (ie: ntfs file compression) or were bad sectors deleted & repaired etc. or what? thanks a bunch as per usual (:

[meglamaniac]

I'm not sure about the free space - depending on the size of your drive it may well just be the better space management employed by NTFS that has freed up the space.
I don't *think* anything will be compressed yet, but if you run the windows defragmenter on it then it does compress certain folders.

[JammyJim]

Under Fat32 i found myself having (on several occasions) major corruption problems due to powerloss / me buggering about with stuff.


Under NTFS ive left this pc on for 2 weeks without any restarts. The only reason i had to shutdown was because my cddrive was acting weirdly and wouldnt let me install Generals (installed another cd drive and it works fine)

NTFS just from what ive seen without even knowing all the technical crap involved has been far far far more stable.

[Ramihyn]

Originally posted by meglamaniac
It doesn't have to trash a whole track - merely 2 adjacent sectors.

2 adjacent sectors wouldnt mean any data loss - you could lose several dozen or hundreds adjacent FAT sectors and recover easily from it.

The FAT copies aren't interleaved.

[Ramihyn]

Originally posted by Mong
Let me just state that I simply fail to see any benefit at all of using Fat32 over NTFS.

None.

Nada.

It's Just Silly.

There are (where?) rare cases. NTFS takes more overhead and when your IO is critically close to the limit of your configuration, FAT32 on a clean partition has a better chance of keeping up. As i wrote, videocapturing people used clean FAT32 partitions as a general "trick". Nowadays the usual hardware setup isnt that critical anymore for a 6 mb/s steady datastream

[Ramihyn]

Originally posted by Androme2
btw - can I ask if the freed up space by the conversion -> were files compressed? (ie: ntfs file compression) or were bad sectors deleted & repaired etc. or what? thanks a bunch as per usual (:

NTFS has two other optimisations which may have done that. Sectors which are filled with Zeroes arent physically allocated and files can be allocated without actually taking the space before it is needed (your swapfile would be a candidate for this). Also it can avoid allocating sectors for files if they are really small. Depends on your content and the number of files you have....

[queball]

Originally posted by Ramihyn
NTFS has two other optimisations which may have done that. Sectors which are filled with Zeroes arent physically allocated and files can be allocated without actually taking the space before it is needed (your swapfile would be a candidate for this).
*snip*

Are you sure? I don't know anything about MSWindows internals, but swap space is supposed to be *fast* and so memory mapped. Sparse files are a great hack, but not for swap. No advantage over dynamic swapspace really.

[Androme]

well the actual loading of windows takes forever - I have deoptimized my start-up processes to just desktopx, and the normal run processes needed by windows as default (did a search)

while it's now freed up to 70MB (compared to 80MB with FAT32), windows is taking much longer to actual load the processes

is this down to a problem with a file of one of the processes due to the conversion messing up ? - I haven't found anything particuarly helpful on this matter specifically so anyone with any newsgroup links or nething would be appreciated - thanks

[BesigedB]

I converted by following these steps
[list=1][*]Defrag[*]Created placeholder.txt at 12.5% of partition size. fsutil file createnew c:\placeholder.txt <size in bytes>[*]Repeat steps one and two in either order for several hours until the file is NOT FRAGMENTED. That is that it is *all* one lump. Otherwise it will not work. Even in two bits it will not work. This is the part that pissed me off :( - if it works first time for you then :(([*]convert c: /fs:ntfs /cvtarea:placeholder.txt[/list=1]

This makes sure the MFT is not fragmented and should make for a better system overall.

What it did do was make the cluster size 512bytes intead of the 16kb it was (eep!) but I dont know if this happens anyway.

[BesigedB]

on that note, how do i make the sector size 16kb again as i just got a 278 hdd score in pcmark

[meglamaniac]

Not sure.
Surely small clusters are preferable for space effeciency unless the majority of your files are large?

I've just has a fiddle with the fsutil command (never knew it existed till yesterday - damn useful thing) and i'm using 512byte clusters too. My disk speeds have always been acceptable, although these are both 7200rpm drives.
Having said that, they are both on the same cable ('bad', in terms of data copy speeds from one to the other) and I can copy a album of MP3s (say 60Mb) from one to the other in about 2 or 3 seconds - nothing wrong there.

Unless you're doing something that really needs peak transfer speeds, is it that important?

[meglamaniac]

That is indeed it's only drawback from my point of view. I have a small fat partition to transfer files from linux to windows (obviously the other way isn't a problem).
Maybe one day, someone will manage to complete the reverse engineering of the standard and write support will be safe.
I would say maybe one day, microsoft would release the spec, but let's not be silly now...

[Intrepid00]

Originally posted by NEWSBOT3
so, this 34 gig fat32 drive im using cant exist then ?

I thought it was like in the hundreds and NTFS limit was 2 TByts myself.