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This may help you make up your mind.NTFS has never given me any problems.
File naming conventions
There's really no major difference between the NTFS5 and FAT(32) file naming conventions. Both file systems support long filenames up to 255 characters in length. These filenames can contain any characters, including spaces; however, there are a few exceptions, which vary for each file system. In general, each file system will preserve the case of a filename, but neither is case-sensitive. In other words, HELP.txt and Help.txt are considered the same file.
Which is faster?
It's difficult to determine which file system is faster, NTFS5 or FAT(32). The decision is complicated because speed depends on the size of the folder, and the location of the file in the folder. When used on an appropriate volume size (and for small folders), FAT(32) may be faster than NTFS because of its more basic structure. FAT(32) also may be able to access files faster because it doesn't have to first check file permissions, as NTFS5 does.
However, if the accessed file is badly fragmented, NTFS5 requires fewer disk accesses to find the fragments because of its B-tree folder structure. This B-tree structure also makes it faster to access files in large folders on a NTFS5 volume than on a FAT(32) one.
Support for large volumes
Microsoft designed NTFS5 for volumes larger than 500 MB to eliminate the inefficiencies that result from using the FAT file system. Microsoft doesn't recommend that you use NTFS on a volume any smaller than 500 MB because of the overhead caused by the system files and log file. As a result of this overhead, which totals about 4MB, it's impossible to format a floppy disk with the NTFS5 file system.
The practical size limit for an NTFS5 volume is 2TB and the maximum file size is between 4GB and 64GB—depending on the system's hardware. Because of these generous limitations, NTFS5 is much more accommodating than the FAT file system for today's powerful systems.
Maximum File Size
FAT supports up to 2GB and FAT32 supports up to 4GB per single file size. However, the way that NTFS first attempts to store files entirely within the MFT record for the file. If the file is too big, it extends the file's data using structures such as external attributes and data runs. This flexible system allows files to be extended in size virtually indefinitely. In fact, under NTFS, there is no maximum file size. A single file can be made to take up the entire contents of a volume (less the space used for the MFT itself and other internal structures and overhead.)
Security
Besides providing larger volume support, NTFS5 also excels in its security features. Unlike the FAT file system, NTFS allows permissions to be assigned to individual files and folders. It's not a requirement that the files or folders be shared for them to have NTFS5 permissions assigned to them. These permissions apply to the local users as well as those users accessing the file over the network.
NTFS5 also offers a variety of permissions, which allows for some flexibility with your security policy. These permissions include Read (R), Write (W), Execute (X), Delete (D), Change Permission (P), and Take Ownership (O). For further explanation of permissions and NTFS5 security, see the article "Combining NTFS and shared permissions for network security."
Recoverability
Perhaps one of the most impressive features of the NTFS5 file system is its recoverability. Through transaction-based recoverability, NTFS5 guarantees the consistency of the volume. Transaction logging allows Windows NT to undo or redo any failed operations. NTFS5 will undo any incomplete transaction or transactions that receive errors. Because of the strong reliability of the NTFS5 file system, you're not required to run any disk repair utilities to maintain the volume Microft says. However, I noticed a difference in performance after running Diskeeper which is a disk defragmentation utility.
FAT/FAT32/NTFS File System Default Cluster Size
FAT32 is made automatically by FDISK when you answer [Y] to Large Disk Support. When answering [N], the file system is made to FAT with a defult size of 1.99GB.
The advantage of FAT32 over FAT is that FAT32 will use lot less space to save the same amount of data since FAT32 cluster size is smaller than FAT file system. Among the file systems that's used by Microsoft OS, NTFS & NTFS5 utilizes the least space for save data and offer additional enhancements such as Compression, Security, MFT. However, NTFS runs a bit slower than FAT32 since features such as Security and Compression features must be check when a NTFS partition is accessed...
FAT
0 to 15MB = 4KB
16MB ~ 31MB = 0.5KB
32MB ~ 63MB = 1KB
64MB ~ 127MB = 2KB
128MB ~ 255MB = 4KB
256MB ~ 511MB = 8KB
512MB ~ 1023MB = 16KB
1024MB ~ 2047MB = 32KB
2048MB ~ 4095MB = 64KB
4096MB ~ 8191MB = 128KB**
8192MB or larger = 256KB**
**To support 4GB or larger FAT partitions that use 128KB or 256KB clusters, the drives must use sectors larger than 512 bytes.
FAT32
512MB ~ 8191MB = 4KB
8192MB ~ 16,383MB = 8KB
16,384MB ~ 32,767MB = 16KB
32,768MB or larger = 32KB
NTFS5
0 ~ 512MB = 0.5KB
513MB ~ 1024MB = 1KB
1025MB ~ 2048MB = 2KB
2049MB or larger = 4KB
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If you do what you always did then you will get what you always got.
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