FAT32 or NTSF

[AhmedRSi]

Just recieved a new external drive should i format it in ntsf or leave it in fat32?

My old external drive was ntsf but what are the major advantages/dissadvantages for fat32/ntsf?

My new headunit can read fat32 (so can xbox 360) but has it got any dissadvantages?

All thats on the drive is HD movies and music really

 

[Mike_182]

NTFS is more secure and can be quicker, if you're just using it for your laptop then I'd use that, however if you plan on plugging it into your headunit or 360 then you'll want to use a format it can understand...

 

[AhmedRSi]

More secure? in what sense? I want something reliable as i plan on keeping this drive for years like my previous drive.

Is it really that much quicker? :S

 

[Mike_182]

Not particularly, and yes, NTFS is more secure as it can deal with file permissions. Reliability wise the two don't differ particularly, it's just the way data is stored on the disk so effectively has no 'reliability' that you'll ever worry about...

 

[AhmedRSi]

Not too bothered with file permissions tbh... its only going to be used by me for mp3s and movies. Think im gnna stick with fat32 so i can plug it into other things if i ever want to!

 

[AhmedRSi]

6 hours to transfer 280gb ftl

 

[Mike_182]

What interface? That's poor.

 

[AhmedRSi]

f**k this im doing it overnight lol

Both drives usb.

 

[Darren S]

I'd pretty much stick with NTFS all the way, these days m8. As a simple rule of thumb, I used to consider FAT32 back in the days when drives were commonly around 10GB in size. NTFS handles larger capacities much better.

One thing that might be worth mentioning is that a drive setup in FAT32 can be migrated to NTFS. An NTFS drive cannot be converted to FAT32 however. Obviously, if you reformat the entire drive then you can format it with whatever the hell you want.

I've got a couple of those USB-pen drives knocking about in FAT32. But that's about it.

D.

 

[Mike_182]

FAT32 is still fine for external storage As to push FAT32 you're using more than an external hard drive as it's capable of dealing with partitions up to 8TB in size.

 

[Mike_182]

I've got a couple of those USB-pen drives knocking about in FAT32. But that's about it.

I've got a 32GB USB Pen Drive that confuses XP, as XP doesn't like formatting volumes over 10GB as FAT32. Lol. It does work though! Just gotta mess with performance settings.

 

[AhmedRSi]

Yeh cheers guys, since its external im gnna stick with 32.

Transfer speed was roughly 11mb/s is that ok for Usb>usb transfer?

 

[Mike_182]

It's not great but I guess you're limited to half of your USB controller's theoretical throughput of 480Mbit. Which equals 30MB/sec. And that assumes you're not using anything else USB as well...

 

[AhmedRSi]

Usb mouse... ipod also connected.... and then the 2 external hds. oops

 

[Mike_182]

That'd do it.

 

[KDF]

I've got a couple of those USB-pen drives knocking about in FAT32. But that's about it.

I've got a 32GB USB Pen Drive that confuses XP, as XP doesn't like formatting volumes over 10GB as FAT32. Lol. It does work though! Just gotta mess with performance settings.

Actually, XP wont format anything over 32GB to Fat32.


10GB is fine.

 

[AhmedRSi]

Did this all last night... but a few files couldnt be copied over?

Is the maximum filesize 4gb on a fat32 formatted drive?!!! how can i get around that?!

 

[KDF]

The maximum size of a single file is 4GB yes.

You could split the files to smaller chunks, but other than that there is now way around it. You could also convert the drive to NTFS ? but then you may loose the ability to read the contents on other systems.

 

[AhmedRSi]

f**k it. convert g: /fsntfs FTW. Allow xbox/headunit... got my ipod for that

 

[dk]

i'd stick to FAT32 all the way for home use, if you ever need to plug it into things like ps3'sand 360's they only read FAT32, for the home user, the only benefit of NTFS is the 4gb file size limit is not an issue, but how many files do you have at home that are 4gb in size? (apart from thos illegal movie ISO's you download which can be extracted anyway and stored as a folder on there so no real issue)

 

[AhmedRSi]

My HD movie rips. Around 5-10gb each depending if their 720 or 1080. Half my hard disk space TBH.

If fat32 had a bigger file limit it would be perfect...