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Old December 8th 09, 04:51 PM posted to microsoft.public.windowsxp.newusers
Bruce Chambers
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Posts: 6,208
Default NTFS or Fat32 which is right?

JS wrote:
"Patti Barden" wrote in message
...
Hi
I have purchased an External Hard Disk Drive, usb2 & main power, 1TB in
size.
The very limited instruction manual says it is best to run it in NTFS.

When I go to MyComputer, on the left column under "Details" it says "File
System: FAT32"
yet when I right click on the external hard disk drive letter (F) and
click "Format" it says "File System NTFS".

Which is right?
Patti


Most external USB drives come pre-formatted as exFAT
which is a newer version of FAT32.

FAT32 is limited in two ways:
1) Max Partition size is 32GB.



Not true. WinXP, by design, cannot create/format a FAT32 partition
greater than 32GB, but that's a deliberate limitation of the OS, not the
file system.



--

Bruce Chambers

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