Hello, There has been alot questions about NTFS lately on this forum, I just want to know one thing - I have windows xp home edition, Packard Bell 128mb ram and a 20gb hard drive what kind of file system would be better for me, FAT32,FAT or just keep it in NTFS, thanks in advance bye

It's a personal choice in my opinion. If you currently are using NTFS and all is good, then let it be. I use FAT32 myself cause I have no need for the extra security that NTFS gives me and if bad things do happen, my data is easier to get at. Later, KTTD

FAT (aka FAT16) would never be recommended for a drive over 2.1GB. that's the FAT16 limitation. FAT32 or NTFS, aren't that different except NTFS cannot be access from a DOS prompt w/o special software. NTFS does provide more security options, which would not be very beneficial to you if you are a single user. on the other hand, XP was built on NT technology, so it is recommended that it is run in NTFS. there's no real reson to revert to FAT32, especially since converting back would require reformatting and reinstalling XP.

well fat is limited to 2gb partitions, so that's not an option. I used to use ntfs...but i switched back to fat32. With XP Home, you're rather limited...you can't use ntfs's file encryption, etc. Only feature that XP Home can use is ntfs file and folder compression. And XP Home's security is simple...basically all users have access to their stuff only (except for administrators). Thus ntfs security is useless. ntfs needs more space to hold the file descriptors...but i believe its cluster size is smaller (so it uses space more efficiently). So if you have alot of very small files, ntfs is more efficient since it's more likely that the files will fit within a cluster (if a file doesn't completely fill up a cluster, then other files cannot use that unused space...) But if you have big files, then fat32 is usually better.

ntfs is more secure, stable and efficient. But, it's drawbacks have been mentioned above in other posts: cannot convert back to FAT32 without losing data, cannot use a normal boot floppy. And, NTFS is more efficient in terms of used space regardless of the size of the files on your drive. If the physical storage of a file takes up any space in a cluster, the rest of that cluster is then not-usable. Regardless of the files size, if it encompasses a neighboring cluster at all, it is considered used space. Therefore, the smaller the cluster size the less wasted space on your HD.

Be cautious of using the convert command from the command prompt. I found it was better when NTFS was full formatted after installing a fresh partition.