FAT32 and NTFS are file systems created for keeping track of files in the hard disk. A file system is a set of logical constructs that dictate how the space on a disk volume is to be utilized. NTFS is more robust and effective simply because of its advanced features and functionalities. FAT, in general, comprises of overly simplistic data structures, hence making operations more time consuming. The functionalities of NTFS are far more over-powering since it makes use of advanced data structures to improve reliability, disk space utilization and overall performance.

Comparison chart</> Embed this chart

FAT32 NTFS

Introduced 1977 July 1993 (Windows NT 3.1)

Contents 1 Origins of FAT and NTFS

2 Features of NTFS vs FAT

3 Comparison of Advantages and Disadvantages

4 Video explaining the differences

5 References

Origins of FAT and NTFSFAT (File Allocation Table) was created by Bill Gates and Marc McDonald in the year 1977. It has undergone many changes since then. The number "32" in FAT32 denotes the number of bits needed to keep track of the files. FAT16 was popular until the arrival of 4GB hard disks. NTFS was born from HPFS file system in collaboration of Microsoft and IBM. NTFS appeared initially for Windows NT platform. Since then it has developed and appears in recent versions of Windows like Vista, XP. Microsoft continues to hold on to NTFS patent.

Features of NTFS vs FATFAT32 is a fluff-free and simple system that is documented and mainly keeps track of file locations. The simplicity of FAT32 has made it the file system of choice for portable storage mediums like in memory cards, mp3 players and flash players. NTFS file system is more complex and

offers multiple enhancements that increase security as well as performance. NTFS file system allows automatic file compression prior to being written freeing up hard disk space and also has disk quotas which allows system administrator to allocate disk space to users.

FAT32 is a derivative of the (FAT) File Allocation Table which supports drives with more than 2GB storage. The largest possible file is 4GB minus 2 bytes. In comparison to its earlier versions, FAT32 uses small clusters and hence uses space more effectively. It can relocate the root folder and use the backup copy of the FAT instead of the default copy. NTFS is much more flexible than FAT32. NTFS does file-level encryption, sparse file support, disk usage quotas, distributed link tracing, file compression, hierarchical storage management etc.

Comparison of Advantages and DisadvantagesFAT32 can be converted to NTFS but it is not so easy to convert NTFS back to FAT. NTFS has great security, file by file compression, quotas and file encryption. If there is more than one operating system on a single computer, it is better to format some volumes as FAT32.

Using multiple operating systems in same computer would make FAT32 a better choice if you want both OSs to read the drive. If there is only Windows OS, NTFS is perfectly fine. Thus in a Windows computer system NTFS is a better option.

What is the difference between FAT32 and NTFS format? Does it have anything to do with speed or performance?

aeg22  asked 7 years ago

Follow

Watchlist

 

 

 

 

Add Media

Make sure your answer follows the Community Guidelines. You may not delete this content after the question moves to reference state.Read more

Best Answer Voter's Choice

goodstuff2use4all  answered 7 years agoFAT32 or NTFS: Making the Choice Choosing the file system to use on a Windows XP system is seldom easy, and frequently it's not just a one time decision.. Different factors can blur the decision process, and some tradeoffs are more than likely. No matter what method you choose to adopt Windows XP, you will have to face the FAT32 versus NTFS decision. Clean and upgrade installs both require you to address the situation early on in the process. Later on, if you add a drive or repartition an existing drive the decision process faces you yet again. Circumstances may dictate the choice for you, but in most cases the options have to be weighed and the tradeoffs of using each method analyzed. Let's look at the available choices. 

File System Choices Most articles discussing file system choices look at FAT32 and NTFS as the two available choices. In reality, there are three systems which could be selected. FAT, FAT32, and NTFS. Granted, FAT32 and NTFS are the primary choices, but on occasion you'll still find the need for a FAT volume. A FAT volume has a maximum size of 2GB and supports MS-DOS as well as being used for some dual boot configurations, but backward compatibility is about the only reason I can think of that FAT should ever be used, other than for the occasional floppy diskette. That said, let's move on to FAT32 and NTFS. 

Which File System to Choose? As much as everyone would like for there to be a stock answer to the selection question, there isn't.

Submit

Different situations and needs will play a large role in the decision of which file system to adopt. There isn't any argument that NTFS offers better security and reliability. Some also say that NTFS is more flexible, but that can get rather subjective depending on the situation and work habits, whereas NTFS superiority in security and reliability is seldom challenged. Listed below are some of the most common factors to consider when deciding between FAT32 and NTFS. 

Security FAT32 provides very little security. A user with access to a drive using FAT32 has access to the files on that drive. 

NTFS allows the use of NTFS Permissions. It's much more difficult to implement, but folder and file access can be controlled individually, down to an an extreme degree if necessary. The down side of using NTFS Permissions is the chance for error and screwing up the system is greatly magnified. 

Windows XP Professional supports file encryption. 

Compatibility NTFS volumes are not recognized by Windows 95/98/Me. This is only a concern when the system is set up for dual or multi-booting. FAT32 must be be used for any drives that must be accessed when the computer is booted from Windows 95/98 or Windows Me. 

An additional note to the previous statement. Users on the network have access to shared folders no matter what disk format is being used or what version of Windows is installed. 

FAT and FAT32 volumes can be converted to NTFS volumes. NTFS cannot be converted to FAT32 without reformatting. 

Space Efficiency NTFS supports disk quotas, allowing you to control the amount of disk usage on a per user basis. 

NTFS supports file compression. FAT32 does not. 

How a volume manages data is outside the scope of this article, but once you pass the 8GB partition size, NTFS handles space management much more efficiently than FAT32. Cluster sizes play an important part in how much disk space is wasted storing files. NTFS provides smaller cluster sizes and less disk space waste than FAT32. 

In Windows XP, the maximum partition size that can be created using FAT32 is 32GB. This increases to 16TB (terabytes) using NTFS. There is a workaround for the 32GB limitation under FAT32, but it is a nuisance especially considering the size of drives currently being manufactured. 

Reliability FAT32 drives are much more susceptible to disk errors. 

NTFS volumes have the ability to recover from errors more readily than similar FAT32 volumes. 

Log files are created under NTFS which can be used for automatic file system repairs. 

NTFS supports dynamic cluster remapping for bad sectors and prevent them from being used in the future. 

The Final Choice As the prior versions of Windows continue to age and are replaced in the home and workplace there will be no need for the older file systems. Hard drives aren't going to get smaller, networks are likely to get larger and more complex, and security is evolving almost daily as more and more users become connected. For all the innovations that Windows 95 brought to the desktop, it's now a virtual dinosaur. Windows 98 is fast on the way out and that leaves NT and Windows 2000, both well suited to NTFS. To wrap up, there may be compelling reasons why your current situation requires a file system other than NTFS or a combination of different systems for compatibility, but if at all possible go with NTFS. Even if you don't utilize its full scope of features, the stability and reliability it offers make it the hands down choice.

Source:http://www.theeldergeek.com/ntfs_or_fat3...

Rate

Comment

Other Answers (9)Oldest

Richatyahoo answered 7 years ago

FAT32 is used in Windows ME, 98, and an option in Windows 200 i believe. NTFS is a more secure type of file system and used on Windows NT, 2000, and XP. It is how the computer uses the file allocation table. It is how the files are stored into a hard drive. Hope this helps..

o Rate

o Comment

o

ben t answered 7 years ago

If i'm not mistaken FAT32 is generally used in the operating systems of windows ME and older and NTFS is used with 2000 and later.

o Rate

o Comment

o

Pran Nath answered 7 years ago

Windows NT introduced the NTFS file system. You can use this formatting system on Windows NT, 2000 and XP. It offers better data security and uses the disk space more efficiently. 

Windows 98 and ME use the FAT32 file system which offers larger partition sizes than the FAT16 system used by DOS and first versions of Windows 95. 

Windows NT and XP can read from and write to both NTFS and FAT32 partitions. 

Think of partitions as a drawer of a cabinet and you will understand the advantage of using the NTFS file system.

o Rate

o Comment

o

818 Papi answered 7 years ago

FAT32 file systems where used in Windows ME and lower, NTFS is used in Windows 2000 and newer. FAT32 only supports files no larger than 3.9 GB and NTFS supports files larger than 4 GB in size.

o Rate

o Comment

o

magilla_the_friendly_gorilla answered 7 years ago

FAT is the old File Allocation Tables format; whereas NTFS is the New Technology File System . 

They both have nothing to do with the speed and performance. That depends on a lot of other things like free RAM space, Processor Speeds, etc. 

NTFS is, however, preferable to FAT while partioning and installing your OS on. 

All the best. 

Cheers

o Rate

o Comment

o

lees68tbird answered 7 years ago

FAT32 was introduced with Windows 95 OSR2, although reformatting was needed to use it, and DriveSpace 3 (the version that came with Windows 95 OSR2 and Windows 98) never supported it. Windows 98 introduced a utility to convert existing hard disks from FAT16 to FAT32 without loss of data. In the NT line, native support for FAT32 arrived in Windows 2000. Windows NT 4 supported FAT32 with free driver by Winternals company, later acquired by Microsoft. 

NTFS or New Technology File System is the standard file system of Windows NT and its descendants: Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003 and Windows Vista. 

NTFS replaced Microsoft's previous FAT file system, used in MS-DOS and early versions of Windows. NTFS has several improvements over FAT such as improved support for metadata and the use of advanced data structures to improve performance, reliability and disk space utilization plus additional extensions such as security access control lists and file system journaling. The exact specification is a trade secret of Microsoft. 

NTFS has five versions: v1.0, v1.1 and v1.2 found in NT 3.51 and NT 4, v3.0 found in Windows 2000 and v3.1 found in Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, and in current pre-release versions of Windows Vista. These versions are sometimes referred to as v4.0, v5.0 and v5.1, after the version of Windows they ship with. Newer versions added extra features. For example, Windows 2000 introduced quotas. 

[edit] Compatibility with FAT Microsoft currently provides a tool (convert.exe) to convert HPFS (only on Windows NT 3), FAT16 and, on Windows 2000 and higher, FAT32 to NTFS, but not the other way around [2]. PartitionMagic by Symantec, PartitionExpert by Acronis and the open source NTFSResize utility are all capable of safely resizing NTFS partitions. Microsoft added the ability to expand the size of NTFS partitions in Windows Server 2003 using the Diskpart command line tool, and shrinking a partition was introduced with Windows Vista. 

For historical reasons, the versions of Windows that do not support NTFS all keep time internally as local zone time, and therefore so do all file systems other than NTFS that are supported by current versions of Windows. However, Windows NT and its descendants keep internal timestamps as GMT/UTC and make the appropriate conversions for display purposes. Therefore, NTFS timestamps are in GMT/UTC. This means that when files are copied or moved between NTFS and non-NTFS partitions, the OS needs to convert timestamps on the fly. But if some files are moved when summer or "daylight saving" local time is in effect, and other files are moved when winter or "standard" local time is in effect, there can be some ambiguities in the conversions. As a result, especially shortly after one of the days on which local zone time changes, users may observe that some files have timestamps that are incorrect by one hour. Due to the differences in implementation of Daylight Saving between the Northern and Southern hemispheres, this can result in a potential timestamp error of up to 4 hours in any given 12 months.[5]

Source(s):Stolen from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTFS

o 1

o Comment

o

youngdominic answered 7 years ago

NTFS or New Technology File System is the standard file system of Windows NT and its descendants: Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003 and Windows Vista. 

NTFS replaced Microsoft's previous FAT file system, used in MS-DOS and early versions of Windows. NTFS has several improvements over FAT such as improved support for metadata and the use of advanced data structures to improve performance, reliability and disk space utilization plus additional extensions such as security access control lists and file system journaling. The exact specification is a

trade secret of Microsoft. 

NTFS has five versions: v1.0, v1.1 and v1.2 found in NT 3.51 and NT 4, v3.0 found in Windows 2000 and v3.1 found in Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, and in current pre-release versions of Windows Vista. These versions are sometimes referred to as v4.0, v5.0 and v5.1, after the version of Windows they ship with. Newer versions added extra features. For example, Windows 2000 introduced quotas. 

In NTFS, everything that has anything to do with a file (file name, creation date, access permissions and even contents) is stored as metadata. This abstract approach allowed easy addition of filesystem features during the course of Windows NT's development — an interesting example is the addition of fields for indexing used by the Active Directory software. 

NTFS allows any sequence of short values for file encoding. This means UTF-16 codepoints are supported, but the filesystem does not check whether the sequence is valid UTF-16 (it allows any sequence of short values, not restricted to those in the Unicode standard). 

Internally, NTFS uses B+ trees to index file system data. Although complex to implement, this allows faster access times in some cases. A file system journal is used in order to guarantee the integrity of the file system itself (but not of each individual file). Systems using NTFS are known to have improved reliability compared to FAT file systems. [citation needed] 

The Master File Table (MFT) essentially contains metadata about every file and directory on an NTFS file system. It includes parameters such as location, size, and permissions. It is used to aid in minimizing disk fragmentation. 

Interoperability 

Details on the implementation's internals are closed, so third-party vendors have a difficult time providing tools to handle NTFS. 

NTFS partitions can be read by Linux since Version 2.2.0. Linux 2.6 contains a new driver written by Anton Altaparmakov (Cambridge University) and Richard Russon. It offers limited write support. At this time (January 2006) it allows only rewriting and some cases of file resize. More write support is available using ntfsmount[2], new userspace driver written by Yura Pakhuchiy in which files and directories can be created, overwritten, renamed, deleted, truncated, and expanded with limited success. Due to the complexity of the internal NTFS structures, both the built-in 2.6.14 kernel driver and the FUSE driver will stop writing to the volume when it detects too many changes to be safe, thus it should not corrupt the volume. Full write support is available using Paragon[3]'s NTFS for Linux 3 driver, although criticised for leaving many errors on the volume when mounted read-write. Alternatively the Windows driver ntfs.sys can be used with Captive NTFS. Recently, a new beta GPL opensource driver ntfs-3g[4] driver has been developed and is being tested by the linux-ntfs team. This driver is based on ntfsmount with extended support of directory index operations and at the moment offers "unlimited file creation and deletion", but it is not yet tested in the field. According to the developer, this userspace driver is twice as fast as the kernel ext3 driver (which is the native linux filesystem) and is 10 times faster than the commercial Paragon Software driver. As of October 31st, ntfs-3g has created its own project and is no longer a part of the linux-ntfs project. 

FreeBSD, and Mac OS X versions 10.3 and later, offer read-only NTFS support. 

eComStation offers read-only NTFS support. 

Free third-party tools [1] for BeOS allow full read and write support, and the OS itself includes read-only NTFS support. 

Compatibility with FAT 

Microsoft currently provides a tool (convert.exe) to convert HPFS (only on Windows NT 3), FAT16 and, on Windows 2000 and higher, FAT32 to NTFS, but not the other way around [2]. PartitionMagic by Symantec, PartitionExpert by Acronis and the open source NTFSResize utility are all capable of safely resizing NTFS partitions. Microsoft added the ability to expand the size of NTFS partitions in Windows Server 2003 using the Diskpart command line tool, and shrinking a partition was introduced with Windows Vista. 

For historical reasons, the versions of Windows that do not support NTFS all keep time internally as local zone time, and therefore so do all file systems other than NTFS that are supported by current versions of Windows. However, Windows NT and its descendants keep internal timestamps as GMT/UTC and make the appropriate conversions for display purposes. Therefore, NTFS timestamps are in GMT/UTC. This means that when files are copied or moved between NTFS and non-NTFS partitions, the OS needs to convert timestamps on the fly. But if some files are moved when summer or "daylight saving" local time is in effect, and other files are moved when winter or "standard" local time is in effect, there can be some ambiguities in the conversions. As a result, especially shortly after one of the days on which local zone time changes, users may observe that some files have timestamps that are incorrect by one hour. Due to the differences in implementation of Daylight Saving between the Northern and Southern hemispheres, this can result in a potential timestamp error of up to 4 hours in any given 12 months.[5] 

DC :)

Source(s):Wiki

o 1

o Comment

o

RSPKR answered 7 years ago

From what I remember, NTFS is supposed to be more stable, more secure, and uses a smaller block size, meaning less wasted space. One problem I've seen with NTFS, though, is that it doesnt' always properly handle long file names. As cheap as disk space is today I normally use FAT32, but that's just my preference.

o Rate

o Comment

o

troydowning answered 7 years agoIt does not really affect speed or performance. It is more about the security of your file structure. 

If you are given a choice, it is better (More Secure) to format with NTFS. 

BUT if you are using Windows NT (4.0?) then Windows NT may not be able to read any drives formated with FAT (16 or 32) 

If you are using Windows 2000 or Windows XP, then go ahead with NTFS and you will be able to access your FAT-16 and FAT 32 drives with no problem. 

In general, NTFS is better. 

I hope this helps!