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sammyman

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Mar 21, 2005
1,001
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I was reading another thread mentioning FAT32. What is that, and is it superior to NTFS? Is it faster for the hard drive to read or write FAT32?
 
FAT32 is a file system used mainly by x86 systems such as linux and pre Windows XP systems. Windows ran on FAT16 and FAT32 until XP came out and NTFS was introduced. For the most part NTFS is the best. NTFS offers better performance and theoretical security. It is however not as compact and takes up more space on a disk, so it is recommended for larger drives.
FAT32 is universal for the most part (mac, linux, solaris, etc) but NTFS is Windows exclusive. The Mac equivalent is HFS.
 
Is HFS faster than FAT32? And can I format my brand new mac to be HFS if it is faster?
 
sammyman said:
Is HFS faster than FAT32? And can I format my brand new mac to be HFS if it is faster?

Your brand new Mac is formatted already in Mac OS Journaled (HFS+). There is no reason to do so. I haven't seen benches but I would say HFS+ is much faster.

I don't think Macs can run on FAT32 :rolleyes:
 
Daveway said:
Windows ran on FAT16 and FAT32 until XP came out and NTFS was introduced.

I'm sorry, this is totally incorrect.

NTFS was introduced with Windows NT. Yes, a loooonnng time ago.

Microsoft realized that there were too many limitations on it's FAT file system and dumped it, adopting NTFS as it's defacto file system. I believe Windows 98 was the final "home" Windows Operating System that used a FAT file system.
 
ME aka: my excrement was the last not to use NTFS, NTFS will be replaced with winFS which wont come out untill way after longhorn is here.

use FAT32 if your going to use pc shares with a mac allot (macs can only read NTFS) use NTFS if your not it's faster and is far less limited than FAT32.

(BTW FAT= file allocation table NTFS = new technology file system as introduced with NT and all NT based OS's after like 2000 and xp)
 
yellow said:
I'm sorry, this is totally incorrect.

NTFS was introduced with Windows NT. Yes, a loooonnng time ago.

Microsoft realized that there were too many limitations on it's FAT file system and dumped it, adopting NTFS as it's defacto file system. I believe Windows 98 was the final "home" Windows Operating System that used a FAT file system.

NTFS was initally designed to get around the limitations of HPFS, which was used by OS/2 and NT for a time, HPFS(386) was much like NTFS except the limitations on disk size, and had less comprehensive security user/group features and they were only available on HPFS by using the Networked version of the filesystem.

NTFS improved over time, got support for bigger drives (NT4 SP3), and then was used as the primary filesystem for Win 2000...

The last OS to use FAT32 as its primary filesystem was the joke known as Windows ME :)
 
yellow said:
I'm sorry, this is totally incorrect.

NTFS was introduced with Windows NT. Yes, a loooonnng time ago.

Microsoft realized that there were too many limitations on it's FAT file system and dumped it, adopting NTFS as it's defacto file system. I believe Windows 98 was the final "home" Windows Operating System that used a FAT file system.

I was meaning going mainstream in the home/home office.
 
interestingly enough i just put a HD with and NTFS partition and a FAT32 partition into my cube, the NTFS partition had a windows install on it all readable but i could not write anything in there, the FAT32 partition had a bunch of weird crap in there when all i kept in it were gfx card roms that needed to be on a FAT32 partition to work properly

(i just realised mypc had a perfectly good 120GB HD in it which i was only useing like 15GB of when one of my cubes was chokeing on a 30GB 5400RPM noisy POS quantum fireball HD, the solution was obious)
 
yellow said:
I'm sorry, this is totally incorrect.

NTFS was introduced with Windows NT. Yes, a loooonnng time ago.

Microsoft realized that there were too many limitations on it's FAT file system and dumped it, adopting NTFS as it's defacto file system. I believe Windows 98 was the final "home" Windows Operating System that used a FAT file system.
Of course if you want, you can install Win2K and XP in a FAT32 partition.

Sushi
 
yellow said:
I'm sorry, this is totally incorrect.

NTFS was introduced with Windows NT. Yes, a loooonnng time ago.

Microsoft realized that there were too many limitations on it's FAT file system and dumped it, adopting NTFS as it's defacto file system. I believe Windows 98 was the final "home" Windows Operating System that used a FAT file system.

ME was the last, but it doesn't deserve the title of operating system since it never operated.
 
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