maikii
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FAT32 vs NTFS?
I know this has been asked a million times before, but I'll ask it again, in case there is any new insight into the topic. I just got a large external HD. What advantages and disadvantages are there in formatting FAT32 or NTFS? Also, is there any advantage these days into partitioning a larger drive into smaller partitions, vs. keeping it as one large partition? Thank you for your insight. 
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wormser
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RE: FAT32 vs NTFS?
2007/12/21 03:37:35
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One advantage FAT32 has is that if your partition gets corrupted you at least stand some kind of a chance of recovering the data.
With NTFS your chances are very slim.
Of course, FAT32 is a time bomb with it's file allocation table layout etc and NTFS is not supposed to corrupt itself...
Of course it doesn't actually work that way in real life.
Partitioning a drive allows for easier backup.
NTFS has a little command overhead to it but with today's disk drives it doesn't matter like it used to.
NTFS allows for larger file sizes.
etc.....
There is no real reason to use FAT32 anymore.
Bottom line.......NTFS FTW.
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pjfarr
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RE: FAT32 vs NTFS?
2007/12/21 06:55:14
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I used an external HD to transfer all my files from my old Win98 PC to a new XP machine back in 2005. I had to format the ext. drive to FAT32 prior to doing this so it would accept data from Win98. After then transferring the data from the ext. drive to the NTFS drive on the XP machine, I decided to keep the data that was on the ext. drive as a backup. I've since kept adding to it over time to back up important stuff.
I would now like to reformat it to NTFS (mainly because of the 4gb filesize limitation of FAT32) and I've read more than a few articles saying this can be done without losing or damaging the data already on the drive. It still makes me a little nervous, though. The drive's 2/3rds full and I don't have room on either internal drive to make a safety copy just in case something goes wrong.
Has anyone actually done this (reformatted a FAT32 drive full of data to NTFS without corrupting or losing any of the pre-existing data)?
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studioaloni
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RE: FAT32 vs NTFS?
2007/12/21 07:30:53
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ORIGINAL: pjfarr
Has anyone actually done this (reformatted a FAT32 drive full of data to NTFS without corrupting or losing any of the pre-existing data)?
I've done it twice, many years ago :) Always worked like a charm, no data was lost both times. Just make sure you won't have a power-outage or such while converting, severing the process before completion can be fatal. FAT32 vs NTFS - no doubt about it, NTFS is tons better and a lot more reliable. And as for partitioning - in my experience, partitioning is the absolute WORST thing you can do to your drive short of dropping it from your 2nd floor window. When you divide a drive up you effectively halve it's performance when both drives need to be accessed at the same time, as the same set of heads will be used to read from both "drives"; but even worse, you lose the ability to perform a dynamic defragmentation (which can be a huge performance booster). See, any hard drive can access the clusters that are closer to the disc's center faster than it can access the outer clusters, and with dynamic defragmentation apps like "Ultimate Defrag" you can optimize your drive for performance to move files that you need higher performance on to the inner part of the disk (you can even configure it to move a whole folder to a high-performance area, I routinely use that feature to keep my virtual intruments' sample data and sonar project folder on the inner tracks). All those advantages are lost when using a partitioned drive, you will end up with one drive that is always slow by default, and the access times for the fast drive will be hurt by partitioning as well. If you just want another drive letter, then mount an NTFS folder as a drive using windows' disk management control panel; you'll have another virtual drive, with no need to partition anything.
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juicerocks
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RE: FAT32 vs NTFS?
2007/12/21 07:37:54
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I recently started working with videos and audio and files more than 4 gb is becoming more and more common. I had to convert over to NTFS after witnessing failed file transfres.
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pjfarr
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RE: FAT32 vs NTFS?
2007/12/21 07:38:13
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Thanks Jay Great info and very articulately expressed. Juice: Yeah, that's where I'm coming from too.
post edited by pjfarr - 2007/12/21 07:42:20
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maikii
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RE: FAT32 vs NTFS?
2007/12/21 08:01:08
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ORIGINAL: juicerocks
I recently started working with videos and audio and files more than 4 gb is becoming more and more common. I had to convert over to NTFS after witnessing failed file transfres.
Although DVDs are larger than 4 GB, individual files on them are usually not larger than 1 GB. Are there really many cases where individual files are larger than 4 GB?
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maikii
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RE: FAT32 vs NTFS?
2007/12/21 08:06:13
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ORIGINAL: wormser
One advantage FAT32 has is that if your partition gets corrupted you at least stand some kind of a chance of recovering the data.
With NTFS your chances are very slim.
Of course, FAT32 is a time bomb with it's file allocation table layout etc and NTFS is not supposed to corrupt itself...
Of course it doesn't actually work that way in real life.
Partitioning a drive allows for easier backup.
NTFS has a little command overhead to it but with today's disk drives it doesn't matter like it used to.
NTFS allows for larger file sizes.
etc.....
There is no real reason to use FAT32 anymore.
Bottom line.......NTFS FTW.
At first, I thought you were making a pretty good case for FAT32, regarding recovering data. I hadn't heard of that before. Why would one be more likely to be able to retrieve data from a corrupt partition if the drive is formatted FAT32? Yet, you conclude that NTFS is better. I guess if one may ever use a Mac in the future, it might be better to have the external drive formatted as FAT32, as Macs don't read NTFS. Or--can the new Intel-Macs read NTFS? What about Linux--can it read NTFS?
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maikii
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RE: FAT32 vs NTFS?
2007/12/21 08:08:21
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Do most folks format to the largest cluster size, 4096 bytes? I think larger cluster sizes are supposed to be faster, although due to slack, would give one somewhat less storage space, depending on how many small files you have.
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DaveR
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RE: FAT32 vs NTFS?
2007/12/21 08:21:32
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ORIGINAL: maikii
Do most folks format to the largest cluster size, 4096 bytes? I think larger cluster sizes are supposed to be faster, although due to slack, would give one somewhat less storage space, depending on how many small files you have.
4096 is not the largest, 64K is. For the audio drive, where most of the storage is WAV files over 64K, this is definitely preferred even though you may lose a few bytes of storage here and there. Disk space is cheap these days.
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pjfarr
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RE: FAT32 vs NTFS?
2007/12/21 08:25:06
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ORIGINAL: maikii
Although DVDs are larger than 4 GB, individual files on them are usually not larger than 1 GB. Hey maikii, I believe that's because the authoring process splits the larger blocks of data into smaller 1gb chunks, then the DVD player seamlessly stitches them back together during playback. I like to archive my video files in their original, raw .avi format which are several gb's larger than they are in their DVD MPEG-2 incarnation. So the 4gb limitation of FAT32 is a barrier for me. That's really the only issue for me in the FAT32 vs. NTFS debate (if you can call it that).
post edited by pjfarr - 2007/12/21 09:48:36
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juicerocks
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RE: FAT32 vs NTFS?
2007/12/21 08:25:16
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ORIGINAL: maikii
ORIGINAL: juicerocks
I recently started working with videos and audio and files more than 4 gb is becoming more and more common. I had to convert over to NTFS after witnessing failed file transfres.
Although DVDs are larger than 4 GB, individual files on them are usually not larger than 1 GB. Are there really many cases where individual files are larger than 4 GB?
That is true maikii, but I wasn't referring to DVD's I was refering to MiniDV tape files from camcorders. I do live recording events that take up a 60 minute tape. I can't sit there and screen throught the tape so I capture it on my laptop which is in realtime so 4 tapes from 2 cameras recording 2 hours of material is 4 tapes. Each tape of one hour comes out to roughly 12gb per tape bedfore editing. That's about 60 gb broke into 4 files. Of course afterwards I move them to my main machine for editing and an external drive for storing. And then those files broken down into 5 minute songs come out to be roughly 1 gb each. Then they get compressed down to flash media to about 20 to 30 MB files for internet viewing. See here to what I end up with. http://www.juicerocks.com/gpage.html 12gb is common for just 1 60 minute camcorder tape.
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maikii
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RE: FAT32 vs NTFS?
2007/12/21 09:12:15
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ORIGINAL: juicerocks
ORIGINAL: maikii
ORIGINAL: juicerocks
I recently started working with videos and audio and files more than 4 gb is becoming more and more common. I had to convert over to NTFS after witnessing failed file transfres.
Although DVDs are larger than 4 GB, individual files on them are usually not larger than 1 GB. Are there really many cases where individual files are larger than 4 GB?
That is true maikii, but I wasn't referring to DVD's I was refering to MiniDV tape files from camcorders. I do live recording events that take up a 60 minute tape. I can't sit there and screen throught the tape so I capture it on my laptop which is in realtime so 4 tapes from 2 cameras recording 2 hours of material is 4 tapes.
Each tape of one hour comes out to roughly 12gb per tape bedfore editing. That's about 60 gb broke into 4 files.
Of course afterwards I move them to my main machine for editing and an external drive for storing. And then those files broken down into 5 minute songs come out to be roughly 1 gb each. Then they get compressed down to flash media to about 20 to 30 MB files for internet viewing.
See here to what I end up with. http://www.juicerocks.com/gpage.html
12gb is common for just 1 60 minute camcorder tape.
OT-- I guess I chose an easier route, in getting a camcorder. I have one that records to a compact flash card, directly into video files (MPEG-2). I have not recorded long enough to find out, but I suspect if the file one was recording to became 1GB in size, a new file would be started. When you press the pause button, then re-start, a new file is created, handy for chapters, songs, etc. Much easier than dealing with transferring from miniDV.
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daveny5
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RE: FAT32 vs NTFS?
2007/12/21 09:16:13
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Unless you have an old Windows ME or earlier system with which you need to have file compatibility, use NTFS.
There's no performance benefit in partitioning a drive. The heads need to move just as far regardless of the partitioning.
Dave Computer: Intel i7, ASROCK H170M, 16GB/5TB+, Windows 10 Pro 64-bit, Sonar Platinum, TASCAM US-16x08, Cakewalk UM-3G MIDI I/F Instruments: SL-880 Keyboard controller, Korg 05R/W, Korg N1R, KORG Wavestation EX Axes: Fender Stratocaster, Line6 Variax 300, Ovation Acoustic, Takamine Nylon Acoustic, Behringer GX212 amp, Shure SM-58 mic, Rode NT1 condenser mic. Outboard: Mackie 1402-VLZ mixer, TC Helicon VoiceLive 2, Digitech Vocalist WS EX, PODXTLive, various stompboxes and stuff. Controllers: Korg nanoKONTROL, Wacom Bamboo Touchpad
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daveny5
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RE: FAT32 vs NTFS?
2007/12/21 09:18:16
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I've done it without a problem (its a conversion not a reformatting). However, you should still make sure you have a backup of your data before attempting it.
Dave Computer: Intel i7, ASROCK H170M, 16GB/5TB+, Windows 10 Pro 64-bit, Sonar Platinum, TASCAM US-16x08, Cakewalk UM-3G MIDI I/F Instruments: SL-880 Keyboard controller, Korg 05R/W, Korg N1R, KORG Wavestation EX Axes: Fender Stratocaster, Line6 Variax 300, Ovation Acoustic, Takamine Nylon Acoustic, Behringer GX212 amp, Shure SM-58 mic, Rode NT1 condenser mic. Outboard: Mackie 1402-VLZ mixer, TC Helicon VoiceLive 2, Digitech Vocalist WS EX, PODXTLive, various stompboxes and stuff. Controllers: Korg nanoKONTROL, Wacom Bamboo Touchpad
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subtlearts
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RE: FAT32 vs NTFS?
2007/12/21 09:18:50
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ORIGINAL: jay_zhead
... All those advantages are lost when using a partitioned drive, you will end up with one drive that is always slow by default, and the access times for the fast drive will be hurt by partitioning as well.
If you just want another drive letter, then mount an NTFS folder as a drive using windows' disk management control panel; you'll have another virtual drive, with no need to partition anything.
... see, THIS is why I come to this forum (since I'm not going to post in that thread, or the other one for that matter)... you learn something new every day. Here I've been blithely partitioning drives for the past few years, never suspecting that it could be messing up my disk performance. This is timely too, since I am about to go and pick up my new quad machine and begin setting things up, and I would doubtless have partitioned the system drive at least. Now I won't. Thanks for the info!
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ohhey
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RE: FAT32 vs NTFS?
2007/12/21 10:08:30
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ORIGINAL: juicerocks
I recently started working with videos and audio and files more than 4 gb is becoming more and more common. I had to convert over to NTFS after witnessing failed file transfres.
Yeah.. that's the big reason to go NTFS. If you work with video. When I bring in camcorder tapes it's about 14 per hour. Some software will automatically bust up the video into files if you are captureing to FAT32 but I hate that. It's nice to be able to just do anything and not worry about how big the file will get. Also, you really shouldn't make a FAT32 partition more the about 30some gig. The Windows disk manager won't let you do it. Most drives are much larger then that now so you would have to partition it up and that will cause performance and file organization problems. So in most cases NTFS is the way to go for big modern drives.
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Geokauf
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RE: FAT32 vs NTFS?
2007/12/21 10:18:07
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OT--
I guess I chose an easier route, in getting a camcorder. I have one that records to a compact flash card, directly into video files (MPEG-2). I have not recorded long enough to find out, but I suspect if the file one was recording to became 1GB in size, a new file would be started. When you press the pause button, then re-start, a new file is created, handy for chapters, songs, etc. Much easier than dealing with transferring from miniDV.
Hello, That is why I would not use a camcorder like the one you have. MPEG-2 is not the format you want your video to start out, if you are going to edit it. MPEG-2 is a compressed format (like MP3 is to audio). When I capture DV from a DV camcorder or my Canopus ADVC110 the format is a lightly compressed AVI file. When you load edit your MPEG-2 file and then compile for DVD your video editor will re-MPEG it (like decompressing an MP3 then saving it again as an MP3, you've thrown away more information. The camcorder makers have actually opted for lower quality video in new camcorders in order to accommodate using flash memory or writing directly to DVD media. The consumer video industry's deep dark secret. GK
post edited by Geokauf - 2007/12/21 10:19:34
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ohhey
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RE: FAT32 vs NTFS?
2007/12/21 10:43:01
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ORIGINAL: Geokauf
OT--
I guess I chose an easier route, in getting a camcorder. I have one that records to a compact flash card, directly into video files (MPEG-2). I have not recorded long enough to find out, but I suspect if the file one was recording to became 1GB in size, a new file would be started. When you press the pause button, then re-start, a new file is created, handy for chapters, songs, etc. Much easier than dealing with transferring from miniDV.
Hello,
That is why I would not use a camcorder like the one you have. MPEG-2 is not the format you want your video to start out, if you are going to edit it. MPEG-2 is a compressed format (like MP3 is to audio). When I capture DV from a DV camcorder or my Canopus ADVC110 the format is a lightly compressed AVI file. When you load edit your MPEG-2 file and then compile for DVD your video editor will re-MPEG it (like decompressing an MP3 then saving it again as an MP3, you've thrown away more information. The camcorder makers have actually opted for lower quality video in new camcorders in order to accommodate using flash memory or writing directly to DVD media. The consumer video industry's deep dark secret.
GK
Yeah.. half the fun of getting the video into your computer is to edit it down and render a new version. If your video is already compressed that means you will be re-compressing video that is already missing most of it's frames.. not good. However, if the camcorder writes MPEG2 (DVD spec and does a fair job of it) AND you are going directly to DVD with no edits then it's not bad.
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wormser
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RE: FAT32 vs NTFS?
2007/12/21 12:25:10
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ORIGINAL: maikii
At first, I thought you were making a pretty good case for FAT32, regarding recovering data. I hadn't heard of that before. Why would one be more likely to be able to retrieve data from a corrupt partition if the drive is formatted FAT32?
Yet, you conclude that NTFS is better.
I guess if one may ever use a Mac in the future, it might be better to have the external drive formatted as FAT32, as Macs don't read NTFS. Or--can the new Intel-Macs read NTFS? What about Linux--can it read NTFS?
I was giving him the differences, from both sides of the equation. As for repairing a FAT drive, there are a ton of forensic tools that you can use to reclaim clusters, rebuild links and so forth. You can even sit for days rebuilding the actual FAT table by hand if the data is that important. Or of course you can use one of the "boot the CD and say fix it" type tools as well. They work rather well and your chance for recovering data is actually decent. Not so with NTFS. Yes there are tools out there but the success rate for them, especially in the hands of a novice is almost zero. All that being said, these days storage is cheap, backups are a normal day to day thing and that is how we cope with data failure. That wasn't always the case. I didn't mention Win98 compatibility because I didn't think anyone here would still be using it. Sorry if I came across as saying FAT is better, it's not. NTFS is the only way to go unless you are interested in Linux and then I would say ext3 with a good RAID card. I also agree with jay_zhead that partitioning the drive is not a great idea these days. Actually the data transfer rate at the edge of the platter is "greater" than that at the center due to zbr: http://www.dewassoc.com/kbase/hard_drives/hard_disk_sector_structures.htm
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maikii
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RE: FAT32 vs NTFS?
2007/12/21 12:34:29
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ORIGINAL: Geokauf
OT--
I guess I chose an easier route, in getting a camcorder. I have one that records to a compact flash card, directly into video files (MPEG-2). I have not recorded long enough to find out, but I suspect if the file one was recording to became 1GB in size, a new file would be started. When you press the pause button, then re-start, a new file is created, handy for chapters, songs, etc. Much easier than dealing with transferring from miniDV.
Hello,
That is why I would not use a camcorder like the one you have. MPEG-2 is not the format you want your video to start out, if you are going to edit it. MPEG-2 is a compressed format (like MP3 is to audio). When I capture DV from a DV camcorder or my Canopus ADVC110 the format is a lightly compressed AVI file. When you load edit your MPEG-2 file and then compile for DVD your video editor will re-MPEG it (like decompressing an MP3 then saving it again as an MP3, you've thrown away more information. The camcorder makers have actually opted for lower quality video in new camcorders in order to accommodate using flash memory or writing directly to DVD media. The consumer video industry's deep dark secret.
GK
Still OT, but I'll continue with this side discussion. I'm sure you are right, that one can get better quality from mini-DV. (Whether that difference in quality would be noticeable to most eyes is a different point, however.) To me, however, the difference in convenience is immense, and I'll put up with the theoretically lower quality for that difference in convenience. The quality of the video I recorded looks good to me. (You may be more of a professional in video recording, and of course then your priorities would be different.) One major complaint I have about my camcorder (one of the first HDD JVC Everio models, using a CF microdrive--the newer ones all have internal hard drives) is the sound quality. There is no option for adding an external microphone, no way to set recording levels, and the sound all ends up clipped and distorted. It might be alright for someone to say "hi, mom" in a home movie, but is not good for recording concerts. (It records in stereo AC3, but the quality is terrible.) Does anyone know of a HDD camcorder that has decent sound for recording music? (I don't mean necessarily for professional recordings, but one that sounds OK at least for music? Back to the original topic--I'd still be curious to hear more in the discussion about NTFS vs. FAT32?
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rdolmat
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RE: FAT32 vs NTFS?
2007/12/21 12:42:40
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yup...
NTFS for INTERNAL DRIVES!!!
but, if you plan to move your external drive around, share it with MAC or Linux desktops (especially when trying to WRITE to that drive from MAC or Linux) etc...then FAT32 is more compatible. My external 300G USB mobile recording drive is FAT32, simply for the fact I can plug it into any computer and read/write data...
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LostChord
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RE: FAT32 vs NTFS?
2007/12/21 13:47:55
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ORIGINAL: maikii
Do most folks format to the largest cluster size, 4096 bytes? I think larger cluster sizes are supposed to be faster, although due to slack, would give one somewhat less storage space, depending on how many small files you have.
Once you defrag your drive, and hence have contiguous files, cluster size will not matter. I believe each file will be represented by a single pointer giving start position and size. Where it will almost certainly matter is when you are creating a file - recording. Each time you fill up a cluster the system will have to go find another and update all the file tables to reflect that it is now being used by the file you are writing to. This is an overhead that can be reduced by pre-allocating when you create the file and then growing it in large chunks or, alternatively, using a large cluster size. cheers
We are born naked, wet, and hungry. Then things get worse.
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Progmatist
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RE: FAT32 vs NTFS?
2007/12/21 13:57:15
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I have 8 partitions total on my system, one of which is FAT32. The reason is so I can boot into Linux using a Knoppix CD, then save my work to the FAT32 partition. It is possible for Linux to write to an NTFS partition, but it's much safer and more straightforward to simply write to a FAT32 partition.
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PhilW
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RE: FAT32 vs NTFS?
2007/12/21 16:12:23
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IMO wormser has some of it the wrong way round. NTFS is more reliable because it is a transacted file system, meaning that change operations have an audit log that's used to restore the system if it boots in the middle. FAT32 has none of this. More info: http://www.ntfs.com/data-integrity.htm
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SteveJL
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RE: FAT32 vs NTFS?
2007/12/21 18:07:19
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ORIGINAL: subtlearts
ORIGINAL: jay_zhead
... All those advantages are lost when using a partitioned drive, you will end up with one drive that is always slow by default, and the access times for the fast drive will be hurt by partitioning as well.
If you just want another drive letter, then mount an NTFS folder as a drive using windows' disk management control panel; you'll have another virtual drive, with no need to partition anything.
... see, THIS is why I come to this forum (since I'm not going to post in that thread, or the other one for that matter)... you learn something new every day. Here I've been blithely partitioning drives for the past few years, never suspecting that it could be messing up my disk performance.
This is timely too, since I am about to go and pick up my new quad machine and begin setting things up, and I would doubtless have partitioned the system drive at least. Now I won't. Thanks for the info!
Don't be in too much a rush to abandon pertitioning. I have seen no performance issues on 2 of my 160 gb drives partitioned 3-ways each, for organizational purposes. I have also never seen any technical articles or papers supporting the position that partitioning is that bad a thing. If I did, I would certainly reconsider my position.
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bitflipper
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RE: FAT32 vs NTFS?
2007/12/21 20:33:47
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NTFS is more reliable because it is a transacted file system, meaning that change operations have an audit log that's used to restore the system if it boots in the middle. This is also why NTFS is slower than FAT, especially with large files. Great for a file server, not so great for streaming audio or video. Ditto for the advanced file permissions, not relevant on a DAW. However, Windows has some artificial limitations built in that make it difficult to format large FAT32 partitions. Chairman Bill wants you to use NTFS. Don't argue with the Chairman. (OK, so he's retired from that job now, but "Chief Architect Bill" doesn't have the same ring to it) Best to go along with the MS world-domination program and go NTFS. Regardless of the file system, make your audio drive one big partition and format it with the largest block size available. Yes, it's wasteful of disk space, but it'll give you the best performance for a DAW.
 All else is in doubt, so this is the truth I cling to. My Stuff
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wormser
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RE: FAT32 vs NTFS?
2007/12/21 21:04:03
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ORIGINAL: Progmatist
I have 8 partitions total on my system, one of which is FAT32. The reason is so I can boot into Linux using a Knoppix CD, then save my work to the FAT32 partition. It is possible for Linux to write to an NTFS partition, but it's much safer and more straightforward to simply write to a FAT32 partition.
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wormser
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RE: FAT32 vs NTFS?
2007/12/21 21:05:23
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ORIGINAL: PhilW
IMO wormser has some of it the wrong way round. NTFS is more reliable because it is a transacted file system, meaning that change operations have an audit log that's used to restore the system if it boots in the middle. FAT32 has none of this.
More info: http://www.ntfs.com/data-integrity.htm
Read my message again.. I didn't say FAT32 was more reliable, I said it was easier to recover if problems occurred. NTFS is more reliable. My poor description may have led to that conclusion however. All I was doing was presenting both sides of the equation. In a nutshell: NTFS more reliable, slightly greater overhead, very difficult to recover but has better built in tools to prevent failure. FAT32 easier to recover, less overhead, smaller file size, more transportable between OS or platforms.
post edited by wormser - 2007/12/21 21:20:54
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jb
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RE: FAT32 vs NTFS?
2007/12/21 21:33:46
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ORIGINAL: bitflipper
However, Windows has some artificial limitations built in that make it difficult to format large FAT32 partitions. Chairman Bill wants you to use NTFS. Don't argue with the Chairman. (OK, so he's retired from that job now, but "Chief Architect Bill" doesn't have the same ring to it) Best to go along with the MS world-domination program and go NTFS.
Yeah, at least mac lets you format a FAT32 partition any size you want. I split 250G externals into a FAT32 and mac partitions of the same size, 116.4G. Seems to me leopard reads and writes to NFTS but I'll wait on that one.
post edited by jb - 2007/12/21 21:51:23
Celeron 300A o/c 450, SBLive, Win98SE
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