win2K - Fat32 or NTFS

What's the Pros & Cons between the two regarding Security, Speed, Robustness and Software Compatibility. And also which is easier to administer? Thanks

In few words - ntfs gives better permision system (aka ufs) and fat(32) is well-rounded windows file system (or it's supposed to be) and shall be avoided whenever possible (amen). Speed - the bigger hard drive the slower fat will be, ntfs doesn't care. Software Compatibility - not an issue.

Definitly NTFS. The only advantage with FAT32 is that on the same box you can use (almost) any Win* OS to read & write to the disk(s). This is only useful for dual booting machines though. Otherways you should go for NTFS as it has a lot more features than FAT32, such as wider cluster ranges, speed, encryption, permission system, compresion rates etc. You'll find all information you need about NTFS on M$ site...

So unless you have some specific need for FAT32, go for NTFS.

//NoXcuz

If my HD is NTFS and i want to use another HD(slave) with FAT32, how can i access that drive? DO i have to convert it first to NTFS?
And also when my windows2000(FAt 32) got an error or something, i just reinstall it(overwrite) and it was fixed. What about with NTFS, can i reinstall it just like the FAT 32 windows? Thanks for replying

hi fellow tf person!



i think the fundamentals are the same so far as usage goes. you can have a hard drive running ntfs and one running fat32 as the file system and as far as im aware you can write between them and they will inter-operate. (anyone feel free to correct me if im wrong)



you can format just the same as you would on fat32.

NTFS takes up more space than fat32 does on an empty drive, but its hardly noticeable with the drives sizes of today.

i don't want to format the HD as what im doing is just to overwrite the previous installation.

I tried a NTFS primary and a FAT32 Slave HD on my PC and it only sees the NTFS and can't even read / write on the FAT32 cuz i can't see it on the windows explorer.

thanks

1.) are you sure you have it configured correctly, jumper wise? does it detect is as the slave device during bootup?

2.) is the drive formatted.

you should be able to see it in windows explorer, so somethings wrong.

in windows 2000 you need to "initialize" it in the drive manager if the partition you want to access has been created with another win2k installation.

just assign a drive letter to the partition there.