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    RickJ's Avatar
    RickJ Posts: 7,762, Reputation: 864
    Uber Member
    		  
    #1

    Jun 19, 2006, 02:07 PM
    NTFS vs Fat32
    Just bought the 100GB version of this external hard drive:
    http://www.seagate.com/products/retail/portable

    It's formatted Fat32. I'm not finding differences that mean anything to me here, or at other comparison websites.

    Is there a benefit to my reformatting it as NTFS?

    Thanks!
    Curlyben's Avatar
    Curlyben Posts: 18,514, Reputation: 1860
    BossMan
    		  
    #2

    Jun 19, 2006, 02:15 PM
    The biggest advantage to using NTFS is security !
    FAT only really has security as an after thought.
    The other advantages are in;
    • Volume size, max 32 Gb for FAT 2Tb for NTFS
    • Performance
    • Fault tolerance
    • Economy
    • Max file size 4Gb Max on FAT


    So don't delay upgrade today!!

    Also you don't need to reformat, unless you really want to.
    You can use the convert command via a cmd prompt
    Full explaination here.
    Northwind_Dagas's Avatar
    Northwind_Dagas Posts: 348, Reputation: 83
    Full Member
    		  
    #3

    Jun 19, 2006, 02:17 PM
    On that very link, you'll see that NTFS performs better on larger volumes, while FAT32 performs better on smaller volumes.

    Also, and you may not care about these, but with NTFS comes file level security and the ability to compress files to save space (although at a cost to performance).
    RickJ's Avatar
    RickJ Posts: 7,762, Reputation: 864
    Uber Member
    		  
    #4

    Jun 19, 2006, 02:35 PM
    Thanks, Guys - that was quick and easy!
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    ScottGem's Avatar
    ScottGem Posts: 64,966, Reputation: 6056
    Computer Expert and Renaissance Man
    		  
    #5

    Jun 20, 2006, 06:56 AM
    the reason it may have been formatted as FAT is because, as an external, it can be moved and connected to other PCs. By using FAT, there would be no problem connecting it to a Win 9x PC.
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