NTFS vs FAT, I need help...

[JCDyer82]

I read a few post about NTFS vs FAT, and found that performance wise NTFS does better. What I believed to understand is the only reason you would want to install FAT is if you were doing something with WIN98 also, is this correct?

Now my main question. I have heard already that Win2000 is not the most compatiable OS for games, and since my new setup is a gaming rig, I was wondering if I choose NTFS over FAT that it would be even LESS compatiable with games. Or would it be the same as fat.

[LPMiller]

no, the file layer won't have any effect on games at all. You can go with NTFS no worries. The only real pain is that it is harder copy a hard drive, you can't just use a dos boot disk, you need something like partition magic.

[Ladogaboy]

Is there a way to load Win98 or Me under NTFS?

[Jiffy John]

I don't think so.

[LPMiller]

nope.

[StonedWheat]

Is NTFS really faster then FAT32? I thought it was the other way around cus NTFS has all that security overhead.

[Jeffbx]

NTFS has more security & stability built in, but it also makes more efficient use of drive space than FAT. Here's a bit of a comparison - http://www.win2000mag.com/Articles/Index.cfm?ArticleID=8294&pg=1

There are some situations where FAT is faster than NTFS, but NTFS (especially NTFS2 in W2K) is faster in most configurations. However, the speed difference between the two is marginal at best.

Pretty much the only reason you would ever want a FAT32 partition under W2K is if you're dual booting with 98. Otherwise, always use NTFS.

[Blu]

Also, NTFS has built in directory based compression, which slows performance a little bit, but for directories that aren't used often, like My Documents, it can be a help saving space.

Blu

[Heihachi]

I actually had freezing problems w/ NTFS... So I went back to fat32.. no problems again!

(not COMPLETELY sure if that was the og problem though)

[hapoo]

i converted my laptop to ntfs and the boot up time slowed to a crawl. I figured it would be better to have a more stable filesystem on a moving computer.