hi
am about to format my next external 80 gb hard drive but not sure whether to format it fat32 or ntfs?
also, should i set cluster size?
it will be used most for playback of 1.5mb loops in live and is solely for storing this audio data.
any suggestions?
thx!
hard drive format fat32/ntfs
NTFS is the better option
FAT32 file system
As the hard drive capacity goes beyond 2 GB, FAT32 was introduced in rush to allow for larger partitions and less waste, however Microsoft did not have enough foresight for fast development of storage technology, the partition size is still limited to 32 GB.
FAT32 is mainly used in Windows 98 and Windows ME, but also supported by Windows 2000 and Windows XP.
NTFS (New Technology File System)
Finally Microsoft has moved a few steps head of storage industry. NTFS virtually removed limitation on the hard drive partition size, hence you use large hard drive (for example 250 GB) by just use one primary partition. This is quite important for pure data storage products such as external had drive and portable hard drive.
Windows NT can only be installed on a hard drive formatted in NTFS. Windows 2000 and Window XP support bother FAT32 and NTFS, you can choose to format the hard drive as NTFS or FAT32 before you install Windows OS.
FAT32 file system
As the hard drive capacity goes beyond 2 GB, FAT32 was introduced in rush to allow for larger partitions and less waste, however Microsoft did not have enough foresight for fast development of storage technology, the partition size is still limited to 32 GB.
FAT32 is mainly used in Windows 98 and Windows ME, but also supported by Windows 2000 and Windows XP.
NTFS (New Technology File System)
Finally Microsoft has moved a few steps head of storage industry. NTFS virtually removed limitation on the hard drive partition size, hence you use large hard drive (for example 250 GB) by just use one primary partition. This is quite important for pure data storage products such as external had drive and portable hard drive.
Windows NT can only be installed on a hard drive formatted in NTFS. Windows 2000 and Window XP support bother FAT32 and NTFS, you can choose to format the hard drive as NTFS or FAT32 before you install Windows OS.
If you ever get the urge to install a Linux partition (which many people are doing these days), you should realize that while Linux can read the NTFS filesystem, it can't write to it. However, Windows and Linux can both read and write to FAT32.
I recently bought a 120 GB second harddrive (for $50 - which is amazing to me) and installed Linux on one of the partitions (Windows is on my main drive). Then I created a third 30 GB partition and formatted it as FAT32. The two OS's can now both access that partition and thus share files freely between themselves. I keep all my important files (like soundfonts, samples, etc.) on the shared partition. It's nice, because if I ever have to reinstall either Windows OR Linux, my files are still safely on a third partition and won't be affected by the reinstall.
Just something to consider.
I recently bought a 120 GB second harddrive (for $50 - which is amazing to me) and installed Linux on one of the partitions (Windows is on my main drive). Then I created a third 30 GB partition and formatted it as FAT32. The two OS's can now both access that partition and thus share files freely between themselves. I keep all my important files (like soundfonts, samples, etc.) on the shared partition. It's nice, because if I ever have to reinstall either Windows OR Linux, my files are still safely on a third partition and won't be affected by the reinstall.
Just something to consider.
This is true, unless you know that you're not going to be sharing the drive with multiple computers with different OS's. If you are only going to be using the drive under windows, then go NTFS all the way. FAT32 has lots of stupid limitations (2Gb file cap, non-journaled, etc), and performs much worse than NTFS. Not that NTFS is a particularly well-known for its performance, but it'll do better than FAT32.zakary wrote:since it's an external drive go the FAT32 way,
if you format it NTFS there are chances that other computers will not identify it (depending on the OS they have) whereas with FAT32 you won't have such a probelm, i have experienced it !
z