NTFS vs FAT32 on WinXP Home

WINXP SP1 HOME
2.0 AMD ATHLON XP 2400
40 G HD
133 BUS
"EEEWWW" Yes I Know 128mb ddr sdrm
Cable ISP

I have tweaked WinXp....and the darn thing is still slower
than Ma Moses in Winter! ,,,

I run AdAware/Spybot regularly....and have AVG
Everything I have says I should be much faster than I am...but the puter or OS is less than optimum...I have bare boned and
am using Windows Classic Setting...to see if that would speed
up...to no avail...and I kinda think that I should be able to run
the pretty graphics with no prob..I also like to work with Gif Constructor...which is murder on my system right now...
I have MemoKit installed and have tweaked CPU..(PC Boost)
to no avail. I have only 22-26 running processes.

My question is this : Is all this slowness due to no Memory(which by the way I am planning on increasing for a total of 768)

Or...in reality...XP...has my C: drive on NTSF....and I always thought Fat32 was the way to go....IT also has my D: drive on
Fat32.....this is supposed to be the backup drive...but if this is
true...will any of the information be useful from D to WinXP
since it wants NTSF?.......Is it possible that WinXP would run
better?(Quicker)..if it were Fat32 even without the memory?
Or is XP Just Way too graphic intensive?....
Just wondering if there would be some sort of conflict should
the need arise for reinstalling XP.

Any Ideas....No hurry...just curious because I plan to sock the
memory in this next week..

Thank you too much for any input.

 

Looks like is your memory. XP is probably taking up all the 128 you have now therefore all your applicatons are left with nothing. the way the information is stored on the computer whether is fat32 or ntfs should not really matter when in comes to the speed of the system. I prefer NTFS because as I understand it it takes longer to fragment and it protects your date better. I am almost positive that once you install the other memory chips you will see the speed.

Also you should visit this website it definately helped me tweak my system. I did not know that xp has so many services running that you do not need. check them out


http://www.blackviper.com/WinXP/servicecfg.htm

My computer seems to have picked up some speed after I did what this website suggested.

 

definatey the RAM is your problem here.

Something to note though is that FAT32 wasn't really designed for large hard drives. NTFS was.

 

Buy atleast another 256mb of Ram.

 

Re:Slow OS

Thank you to all you guys for the info...and I pretty much thought
the answer was in Mem.
So I will install a full 768....
and thanks for the particulars on the NTSF

I have been to BlackViper's and guess I missed the tweaks...
lots of good stuff there....

thanks again,
and have a grrreat day!

 

It is the knowledge that all of us pocess that makes this forum so strong and helpful. Not everybody can be an expert in all areas, that is why we come here so that we can learn what others know.

If you click on the link Black viper just scroll down till you get to the list of processes then just clic on each one to get the full details of each and one of them.

Type services.msc at the command prompt then follow black vipers list. it pretty much goes in order of process.

 

If you can tell the difference in speed, then you are REALLY perceptive. In any case the only speed difference would be at the beginnging of the drive. On larger hard drives (should it be more full than empty) you will note that NTFS has a leg up. You want faster NTFS performance, then turn off time stamping on files..

 

If there is a difference in speed I have never noticed it.

Not enough speed change for me to have notice a decline in performance

 

I agree, I've never been able to tell the difference..

 

I've yet to see the difference in speed between NTFS and Fat32 speed wise.



It *maybe* makes 1-2 fps difference in a game.

I guess if you are ram starved and constantly swapping from the hard drive, then maybe, just maybe, fat32 makes a larger difference.

But then, if you are a serious gamer/tweaker/etc., why would you starve your system of ram. My hard drive rarely, ever thrashes during a game. But then I have 1gb of ram too.

But if you want to have a fast filesystem, go with fat16

 

HMMMM...

Lots to chew on here....maybe I am just more impatient
than anything?

Can't wait to put the xx ram in!

Thanks for all the points to ponder tho, goood schtuff!

 

you can even reduce your cluster size on NTFS and that will increase performance too..

 

user partition magic.. there is an option in there for resizing the clusters..
smaller clusters = faster but usually takes up more space on the drive

larger clusters = slower but saves space..

 

Other way around Kodo.


Larger clusters are faster, and take more space (a 1kb file in a 4k or larger cluster still takes 4k, so imagine if it was 32k).

smaller clusters are slower but conserve space.

Thats why on lare drives, ntfs is more efficient. Thats why we aren't still using fat16. The cluster sizes start getting enormous. Likewise, as drive capacity increases, so do the clusters of fat32.

ntfs=default 4k, all the way through, I think.

http://www.epinions.com/cmd-review-60E1-10699453-393D37A1-prod1

 

we're both partially correct.

It depends really on the file size.
If I have small clusters and my files are of the same size (highly improbable but for sake of arbitration) then the speed will be superb. One time read and done. Though If i Have a file that is fragmented over multiple clusters it does take performance hit.

If I have a file server with lots of larger files, I don't want to use small clusters because of fragmentation. If I have a file server with lots of smaller files and I'm looking for speed, I make the clusters smaller.. the size of the file and the size of the cluster is also relative to performance.

Conversely, if I have a larger file in a larger cluster it takes a hit when drilling down into the cluster to read the data as well as it's dependency on spindle speed.

One of the main reasons why NTFS is more efficient on larger hard drives is because of the way it indexes. If the file is small enough, instead of making an index to it in the MFT, it just stores it in the MFT. What size this is, I do not know.

It's also pertinant to note that cluster size is relative to partition size.. I don't recall the equation, but if you have a partition of a certain size it will not let you create clusters smaller than it's calculated relation.

in all, this is a situationally dependant scenario and I should have been much more clear in my response.

 

So what do you all consider the optimal size of the cluster to be
for a home user.

I know that the default is 4 but would it be better to change that for better performance.
I use the default setting but if it would increase performance to change it. I would consider doing so.

 

Re:Cluster

Assuming I wanted to do so....partition, with larger cluster
and Larger disk....wouldn't I have to be specific in allotting
for each application size/or action in that application?...To
gain the greatest speed?...and then if that were so...wouldn't
I need a larger drive to partion for even more apps that I wanted
to run? And if I had larger clusters wouldn't there be more fragmenting of info in those clusters?

I think I am understanding correctly and all this would take a
lot of time to make it exact for each app...and not to mention a
good calc. Someone should make an application table in
relation to cluster table...keep me lazy, then all I would have to
do is configure according to that particular table...easy huh?
I realize I am speaking strictly supposition...or has this been done somewhere....way up high?

Ya think?
Interesting proposals.