FAT 32 or NTFS for SATA Drives

I purchased a SYSTEMAX ASCENT BAX4200 BTO PC with an AMD Athlon 64 X2-4400+ Dual Core Processor and a Serial ATA (SATA) Hard Drive 250GB (7200 RPM) from Tiger Direct.com. It was sent with the file system as a FAT32. I believe I would get better performance if I converted it to NTFS. Before I do this, I would like to know if it was sent to me as a FAT32 because that is what it should be or if they wanted me to make that decision to convert it to NTFS. This is my first SATA drive so I don't know if NTFS is not a good choice for a SATA drive. Windows XP Professional is installed on the system.
Thanks in advance. LLW

 

NTFS is the way to go with XP unless you need to dual-boot your system with an older OS.

 

Hi, I'm too busy being jealous of your new machine to answer.

Naw, kidding. Sata or pata (ata-ide) has no bearing on whether you convert to NTFS. It's really just your choice. No need to remind to do backups - the conversion nukes the drive contents once ever so rarely. Doesn't hurt the physical disk, just loses the data.

I would love to know that you have Partition Magic or similar to do the conversion because you can choose the sector size. The old Win98 floppy default is pretty large for sector size, and that wastes space and loses a bit of speed. PM gives you a drop down box to choose whatever you want.

You probably know that you can't do this from the Windows environment. It has to be from a boot disk while Windows isn't running since this will be your active, primary, system disk (drive letter.)

If you ever want a dual boot, you have to reinstall everything because Win98 has to be installed first, and on the C: drive as FAT 32. Next you can install XP on the second partition, and that can still be NTFS.

 

Thanks for the conformation Jerkyking on NTFS being best for Windows XP. I am however confused why the maker (SYSTEMAX) sent it in FAT32 and not NTFS.

Also a thanks to techsalong for all the good advise on picking the right software program to convert my operating system to NTFS. I like having options and will look in to Partician Magic.

Again thanks
LLW

 

I see really good deals on legitimate software often on ebay. Partition Magic has an MSRP of about $50. Here are some ebay listings:

http://tinyurl.com/btxky

It appears that someone is advertising "Magic Partition" which isn't the real thing. We need PowerQuest or Norton/Symantec (same thing, norton bought out powerquest) version 8.0 - the real thing.

 

I'm confused?

Why are you requiring Partition Magic? (and I know about all the theories on cluster size etc, which is as rare and meaningless as hens' teeth)

Even if you had to convert from FAT32 to NTFS, XP can do that OK. (and I have also heard the hype about this, but I've yet to see it fail)


Unless you have specific requirements, I don't see the point of PM.

 

Personnally, I would never trust software gotten off of eBay.

 

Or hardware. Ebay means Upay.

I've seen so many dodgy deals it isn't funny. Everything from pirated software and dead hardware, to GMail accounts!

 

On hard disks that are 32 GB or larger, Windows NT, 2000 Pro and XP Pro use a default cluster size of 4KB. Within that cluster are 8 sectors. As we know, a cluster is the smallest space on a disk that can hold a file. Once data is written, any left over space must be and is unused.

A smaller cluster size of 512 bytes contains just one sector. Within reason, the smaller the cluster size, the less disk space will be wasted within unused parts of a cluster, and more data can then be stored on a disk.

If clusters are too large, say 64KB, there will be lots of wasted space and a slower read/write event. This is irrelevent here in a way because the above OS's don't ask for a cluster size larger than 4KB because that's the largest cluster size that will support the native disk compression.

However, if one selects a cluster size of 2KB in NTFS, the above OS's will still support disk compression, read/write a bit faster and hold more data.

http://tinyurl.com/6z475

I think maybe different people have had different experiences with ebay. Of course I watch feedback and the type of merchandise someone normally sells, but I recently bought a retail, sealed package edition of Acronis True Image 9.0 for $25. MSRP I "think" is $70 and street price I "think" is about $50. I wanted 9.0 because its backup utility supports both incremental and differential backups, and 8.0 didn't. I received it, installed it and registered it.

I hope I didn't give the impression that I was "requiring" PM. Of couse XP has the "convert" utility and it works great. I just like PM because of it's graphical interface and because I can choose cluster sizes, and in my case 2KB, which is my favorite for these mentioned OS's. On a clean install, I always use it to partition and format the drive because of its flexibility and speed. Just my $.02, but someone else might find it handy too. Of course, off topic, it will add partitions to a hard disk that already has data on it, including a system disk with a windows install.

I don't disagree with anyone here. Just my $.02 for my preferences.

 

From what I understand, Fat32 is supposed to run fun faster if you're installing XP on an older lame machine. But NTFS is tons less prone to "corruption". So since "lameness" is not an issue at all here, NTFS is the way to go.
And BTW, I DID test out that theory. I found no difference in performance with the 2 file systems, when installed both ways on a lame machine. The machine was lame either way. LOL (A 300MHZ AMD K-6, with 128ram was the test victim).

 

Is your other hobby rowing across the ocean against the winds and waves in a
canoe?

 

As I said, I'm aware of the cluster "theory". I've yet to see a problem however.

There is also a rumour that XP is a good OS.


LLW, just use the XP CD and format to NTFS. No need for Partition Magic unless you require advanced features.