NTFS faster than FAT32????

[yorick]

Hi all,

I have a problem with the installation of windowsxp. I
always have used the fat32 partition at home but i
recently heard a rumor that ntfs is faster than
fat32...is this true? Which one should i use?

Sincerely,

yorick

[Rich Barry]

NTFS is more desirable for it's file management and security but not for
it's speed.
"yorick" > wrote in message
...
> Hi all,
>
> I have a problem with the installation of windowsxp. I
> always have used the fat32 partition at home but i
> recently heard a rumor that ntfs is faster than
> fat32...is this true? Which one should i use?
>
> Sincerely,
>
> yorick

[R. C. White]

Hi, Yorick.

After years of using successive varieties of FAT, I've been using NTFS
almost exclusively for the past couple of years. I can't see any
significant difference in speed. I can't even tell you which is faster;
they seem the same to me. I have seen a difference in how often I need to
recover from disk errors! Those are very rare in NTFS. This is a
"journaling" file system which, in addition to better security from prying
eyes, also gives better security from disk errors because it doesn't erase
the old data and pointers until the new data has been written and the
pointers updated.

One factor that affects speed in both FAT and NTFS is the cluster size. For
the HD sizes we use today (between 512 MB and 2 TB), NTFS almost always uses
4 KB clusters. FAT32 might use clusters as small as 512 bytes (for volumes
smaller than 64 MB) to 16 KB (volumes over 16 GB). To load a 100 MB file
from 512-byte clusters, the OS has to read 200,000 clusters; from 4 KB
clusters, it would have to read 1/8 that many, or 25,000 clusters. It would
read the same amount of data, but there would be less overhead, letting it
load all the data more quickly. The small clusters would not take 8 times
as long, but at least somewhat longer.

On the other hand, every file wastes, on average, 1/2 cluster. Whether that
is the only cluster for a very small file, or the final cluster on a longer
file, unless the file fits exactly, a part of the final cluster will be
unused. So a thousand randomly-sized files would waste 1/2 of each of 1,000
clusters. If the file system (either FAT or NTFS) is using 512-byte
clusters, that's 256 KB wasted; if they are 4 KB clusters, that's 2 MB
wasted; 16 KB clusters would waste 8 MB. On a 20 GB volume, FAT32 defaults
to 16 KB clusters; NTFS defaults to 4 KB.

Bottom line: small clusters use disk space more efficiently; large clusters
give faster performance. NTFS vs. FAT32 makes little difference in these
respects.

Which one is best for YOU? Depends on how you use your computer. Do you
have tons of small files, or a big database? Are you constantly writing
updated data, or do you mostly just load programs which seldom change?

Win9x/ME can't even SEE an NTFS volume, so if you plan to access these
volumes with those, you'll have to use FAT. Otherwise, NTFS is the clear
winner for almost everybody. WinXP can mix and match FAT and NTFS without
hassle.

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX

Microsoft Windows MVP

"yorick" > wrote in message
...
> Hi all,
>
> I have a problem with the installation of windowsxp. I
> always have used the fat32 partition at home but i
> recently heard a rumor that ntfs is faster than
> fat32...is this true? Which one should i use?
>
> Sincerely,
>
> yorick