Archived from groups: microsoft.public.win98.gen_discussion (
More info?)
On Sun, 6 Mar 2005 02:48:31 -0700, "Bill in Co."
>cquirke (MVP Win9x) wrote:
>> 2) XP does not have a maintenance OS: True, and that's Bad
>Yeah, and that one scares me a bit, at least at this point in time. I've
>had to go down to DOS on a few occasions, including reinstalling and/or
>"fixing" windows, and losing that "maintenance OS" capability kinda bothers
>me (even if you do have a "Recovery Console" in XP)
You can have the best of both worlds; the safety and maintainability
of FATxx with the stability and scalability of XP. Tips:
1) Keep C: as a FAT32 < 7.9G
This will ensure 4k clusters, which fit the processor's natural page
size for best virtual memory performance.
There are other goodnesses to a small C:
- keeping C: de-bulked makes for sustained performance
- faster defrag and Scandisk / Chkdsk / AutoChk for C:
- most writes, thus corruption risk, kept on C: (page/temp/TIF)
- as data is off C:, it's safer from file corruption
2) Install a Win9x DOS mode to HD
Easiest way is to format C: /S from a Win9x DOS mode before installing
XP; that way, the XP installation process will preserve the DOS mode
as a "Microsoft Windows" Boot.ini boot alternative.
3) Use DOS Mode Scandisk, not XP's file system checker
I suspect XP's file system checker is pretty useless on FATxx volumes,
because if you rt-click such volumes and go Properties, Tools, Check
for errors, it zips through the process so quickly that I doubt if it
does anything at all. I suspect this is where the XP vs. FATxx horror
stories come from; plain lack of decent file system maintenance.
4) Shrink Temporary Internet Files (TIF) for each user account
FATxx is less efficient than NTFS when it comes to large numbers of
entries per directory - and that's a big problem with IE's ludicrous
huge duhfault TIF size. Huge TIF also means the tiny files within TIF
get ancient before they are finally FIFO's out; hello, fragmented file
system! Note that TIF is repeated for each user profile.
5) Locate shell folders off C:
Now that you have volumes other than C: that are safer for data, you
want to relocate "My Docs" etc. off C:, and I'd also un-nest the bulky
"My Pics", "My Vids" and "My Music" and the dangerous "My Received
Files". TweakUI for XP can do this, but once again, it has to be
repeated for each user account - and any newly-created user accounts
will start off with MS's duhfault shell locations and huge TIF.
6) Use a compitent partitioning/formatting tool
XP is worse than useless when it comes to FAT32 volumes over 32G in
size, plus you want all volumes to be aligned such that if you do
convert to NTFS later, you won't be cursed with s-l-o-w 512-byte
clusters. BING from www.bootitng.com fits the bill on all counts; you
don't need to install it to HD, just use it to manage partitions.
7) Know the limitations of FATxx!
Choosing FATxx over NTFS is throwing away per-user security as a
tradeoff for better safety. Many of XP's per-user and per-file
security features require NTFS to work, and if you convert a C: to
NTFS later, the installation will not be set up with the appropriate
NTFS security attributes that would have been in place had you set the
system up as NTFS in the first place. Also, remember that NTFS is
required if you want single files to exceed 2G in size.
If you don't want to lose the security benefits of NTFS, but want some
measure of maintainability, you can use a hybrid approach; a mixture
of NTFS and FATxx volumes. For example, you can route all incoming
material through FATxx so that it can be virus-scanned from DOS mode
as a pointer to what may have infected the system.
You'd need to make decisions about C: as well as your data locations,
as to whether you want NTFS or FATxx for these. If you see value in
security settings that require NTFS in order to protect the OS, you
may choose an NTFS C:; if you don't mind losing the ability to recover
data via Diskedit etc. and want NTFS's security benefits, you might
choose NTFS for your data set as well.
There's still no interactive file system repair tool (like Scandisk)
for NTFS, but you can formally scan NTFS from a Bart's PE CDR and
Trend's SysClean that you can drop and run from a USB stick. Both
Bart's PE and Linux boot CDRs require USB sticks to be present at time
of boot, unlike XP which will detect them on the fly.
>-- Risk Management is the clue that asks:
"Why do I keep open buckets of petrol next to all the
ashtrays in the lounge, when I don't even have a car?"
>----------------------- ------ ---- --- -- - - - -
But, I hope, that you
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