QUOTE: <font color=blue>” NTFS is safer”</font color=blue>
In addition to Encryption and other safety features, the NTFS provides some more advantages:
<b>Disk Quotas</b>
<b>File Compression</b>
<b>Hard Links</b><i> (NTFS adds a directory entry for the hard link without duplicating the original file)</i>
<b>Distributed Link Tracking</b> <i>(ensures that shell shortcuts and OLE links continue to work after the target file is renamed or moved)</i>
<b>Sparse Files </b><i>(a method of saving disk space)</i>
<b>POSIX Compliance</b><i>(e.g. Case-sensitive naming, Hard links, Additional time stamps)</i>
<b>TFS Change Journal</b> <i>(a persistent log of changes made to files on a volume)</i>
<b>Indexing Service</b>
QUOTE: <font color=blue>” …and FAT32 is faster”</font color=blue>
It’s not so simple, HDD performance on FAT32 vs. NTFS depends on a variety of factors.
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<b>FAT highs:</b>
The effective work requires few of RAM.
Fast work with small and average directories.
The disc implements less movements of the heads (as compared with NTFS).
The effective work on slow (old models) discs.
<b>FAT32 lows:</b>
- Quick performance decrease with the fragmentation going up.
- Difficulty in access to big files (more than 10% of the disc space).
- Very slow work with directories containing huge amount of files.
- Not effective work on large (modern) discs
<b>NTFS highs:</b>
- Fragmentation does not influence the system performance (the work might became worse as far as data access is concerned).
- Complicity of the structure of directories and the number of files do not affect the performance.
- Quick access to the required file fragment (i.e. editing of big .wav files).
- Very quick access to small files (several hundreds bytes) - the whole file is located in the same place as the system data (MFT recording).
<b>NTFS lows:</b>
- The memory size mustn't be less than 64 MBytes.
- Slow discs and controllers without Bus Mastering slows the system performance down tremendously.
- The work with average-size directories is quite difficult, since they are fragmented.
- The disc working for a long time with 80% - 90% of its space occupied shows low performance.
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OK, the RAM size is the chief factor influencing the system performance. In case of 64-96 MBytes both NTFS and FAT are equal.
If you are using only an OS and simplest applications, FAT32 might turn to be better on the PCs with bigger size of memory.
QUOTE: <font color=blue>"...If you will work with your PC use NTFS, if its for gaming use FAT32."</font color=blue>
Yes, on typical game system NTFS won't show the brilliant operating speed!
NTFS is still a system for future. The main advantage is that the complicity of directory structure, disc size, fragmentation do not have an influence on the system performance.
In FAT, on the contrary, all these factors slow the operating speed down.
FAT 32 <b>is the better choice for simple users' systems</b>. As for graphics workstations, office computers with thousands of documents and moreover file-servers, NTFS shows higher performance.
Probably the support for FAT will be discontinued soon.