Hi! I'm about to install WinXP Pro on a brand new machine and I was wondering what the difference is between NTFS and Fat32 and what you would recommend...? Any thoughts appreciated :) The harddisk is 40 Gig, and i was thinking in creating 2 partitions of 20 gig each. Thank you in advanced, Lizette

FAT and NTFS performance http://www.digit-life.com/articles/ntfs/index3.html http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/expertzone/columns/russel/october01.asp http://www.thundercloud.net/information-avenue/ntfs-vs-fat32/ http://www.ntfs.com/ntfs_vs_fat.htm http://www.microsoft.com/hwdev/tech/storage/ntfs-preinstall.asp http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/home/using/productdoc/en/default.asp?url=/WINDOWSXP/home/using/productdoc/en/choosing_between_NTFS_FAT_and_FAT32.asp http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=314463 http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;310525 http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/en/server/help/choosing_between_NTFS_FAT_and_FAT32.htm http://members.aol.com/midnightdreary/filesystems.htm http://www.anandtech.com/guides/viewfaq.html?i=63

NTFS is the better file system. But ask yourself, if something goes wrong, do you have any NTFS disk tools. You may be better off sticking with FAT at the moment as you can use your old win98 boot disks. As for partitions. Could be worthwhile setting up a 10gig partition for windows, then 2 15gig partitions, 1 to install programs too and 1 for data. Why? Keep windows in its own partiton so should you need to re'install you can clean format that partiton and start again without losing the rest of your data and programs. I always keep data seperate for easy backups and weeding.

FAT and NTFS performance http://www.digit-life.com/articles/ntfs/index3.html http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/expertzone/columns/russel/october01.asp http://www.thundercloud.net/information-avenue/ntfs-vs-fat32/ http://www.ntfs.com/ntfs_vs_fat.htm http://www.microsoft.com/hwdev/tech/storage/ntfs-preinstall.asp http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/home/using/productdoc/en/default.asp?url=/WINDOWSXP/home/using/productdoc/en/choosing_between_NTFS_FAT_and_FAT32.asp http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=314463 http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;310525 http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/en/server/help/choosing_between_NTFS_FAT_and_FAT32.htm http://members.aol.com/midnightdreary/filesystems.htm http://www.anandtech.com/guides/viewfaq.html?i=63

Id go with ntfs. A lot of people worry about the fact that when the NTFS formatted drive starts losing data and you cant boot any more your kind of up a creek. but youll be kind of upa creek anyway. Also if you ever want to move the drive to a 9x box your up a creek. but... NTFS is faster and more robust then FAT. My favorite partitioning scheme is a small windows partition of around 3 to 5 gigs. Make the windows partition the first partition you make so it will be on the fastest portion of the disk. The outer edge. Then make another partition for apps leaving about 8 to 10 gigs unformatted. Format the last 8 to 10 gigs and make it the desktop and temporary files. i make a folder and put my start menu, favorites, my documents, my pictures, and all the other "my stuff" here and my temp folders. I make windows explorer point its temporary internet files here too. I use tweak UI to point the desktop at the root of the desktop drive and point the program files directory to a folder on the apps drive and so one with the startmenu and the temp folder. one benefit to this is being able to reinstall windows without losing all your data or really any of your daya. your desktop and startmenu and all that will be all there ready to pointed at again. but my primary reasons for this are. A: speed B: fragmentation. Speed: drives transfer data faster on the outer edge. Drives are funny but they slow down when getting to the inner edge of the disk. They spin slower so they can pack more data onto the drive. Consider that if the drive spun at a constant rate from outter to inner that either the inner or outer part of the drive would have a considerable amount of data space lost as more disk area is covered on the outter edge in one revolution then the inner edge. You can see this effect very clearly with disk benchmarking utils. So having the windows install along with the swap file on the outter edge or first partion gives all the windows systems files the fastest part of the drive. the inner edge transfers data considerably slower then the outter edge. about half sometimes even slower. Fragmentation. If you move the start menu, the "my" folders, and temp folders to the desktop drive the windows partition will more or less never fragment. moving all of the documents and settings folders over requires a bit of hacking so i wont recommend that although it would achieve the best results. same is basically true for the apps drive. the desktop drive however will be incredibly fragmented fairly quickly but this is not really important as most of the files are very small, shortcuts and such, and having the them fragmented doesnt make a lot of difference inaddition to the fact that fragmentation reduces speed and speed for the icons and shortcuts is also fairly irrelevant. This sounds like a bit of work but its actually pretty easy to do. Tweakui makes this fairly simple. And if you do need to reinstall your os thats all you lose is the os. Put the OS back on reset where everything points to with tweakui and outside of losing the regristy settings for some apps your system is pretty much exactly what it was. Start menu, my documents, and apps although some apps will need to be reinstalled anyway. If you dont go through all this trouble i would highly reccomend not partitioning your drive as it will cause more headaches then it solves. This works even better if you add a new drive to the machine. for instance my current setup is this. 1 80 gig drive. 1 9 gig drive. the 80 has two partitions. a 3 gig partition for windows. which works pretty well although i think 4 would give a little more breathing room. Doesnt need more then that really. i have 500 megs free on my windows partition which is a bit slim but when first installed it was well over a gig free. the rest of the 80 gig is my apps drive which at this moment is nearly full too. the 9 gig drive is my desktop. Also if you feel like it you can make the windows partition NTFS and the desktop and apps drives FAT. there you sort of get the best of both worlds. Anyway thats my partitioning theory which holds fairly true. Worked a hell of lot better in win9x. in 9X the windows partition would remmain near fragment free for over a year of computer use. Sorry for the long post.

Thank you guys for all your help! Crunchy Gremlin, don't worry about the long post, it was interesting to read :)