Naked Science Forum

Non Life Sciences => Geek Speak => Topic started by: neilep on 31/08/2008 18:02:15

Title: What's the difference between FAT and NTFS?
Post by: neilep on 31/08/2008 18:02:15: Thanks to all the kind assistance I have received filled with kind advice about the nature of a replacement hard drive can i also ask what the difference between FAT & NTFS ?

What are the pluses and minues of both ?

HUGS and THANKS

Neil

_{Mod edit - Formatted the subject as a question - please do this to help keep the forum tidy and easy to navigate - Neil, you really should know better!

ewe're right , I ought to know better, I have berated myself accordingly and sent myself to see the headmaster where he will no doubt give me a slap with a ruler ! [;D]}
Title: Re: What's the difference between FAT and NTFS?
Post by: Freeman on 31/08/2008 19:37:45: Quote from: neilep on 31/08/2008 18:02:15
Thanks to all the kind assistance I have received filled with kind advice about the nature of a replacement hard drive can i also ask what the difference between FAT & NTFS ?

What are the pluses and minues of both ?

HUGS and THANKS

Neil

Well Neil in these types of file handling systems there is basically no pluses and minuses because in programing the successor of the first written program will exceed it by far as performance and stability is considered.

NTFS is in this case the one to choose as your file handling system.Reasons for this is that it has improved performance, reliability, and disk space utilization, plus additional extensions such as security access control lists (ACL) and file system journaling.FAT file handling systems are by way of speaking outdated it has none of the features stated above.

But FAT32 the successor of FAT16 is still used in flash discs,this however is outsourced by NTFS in hard-drives.

Hope this solves your question [:)].

Cheers
Freeman.
Title: Re: What's the difference between FAT and NTFS?
Post by: Gabe2k2 on 11/09/2008 22:23:16: tou can format most flash drive with the ntfs format too !

However Microsoft I belive no longer has exclusive rights to fat32 which is why meny devices still use this format.
Title: Re: What's the difference between FAT and NTFS?
Post by: me_ben on 15/10/2008 06:04:08: Microsoft actually never had that right anytime Its been used by all major Operating systems from day one either you can say Linux Mac OSX or watever FAT32 Universal appeal is there

________________________________________________________________________
Ben
<Mod edit - Spammy URLs removed and blacklisted from the site>
Title: Re: What's the difference between FAT and NTFS?
Post by: erickejah on 31/10/2008 02:02:36: Quote
Windows users have three file system option to choose from: the original(but rarely-used) FAT file system, the newer FAT32 file system, and the newest NTFS file system. The recommended file system for windows XP and Vista computers is NTFS because it supports much larger drives and files than either FAT or FAT32 and it includes better security and error-recovery capabillities. PCs with older versions of Windows would need to use FAT32, which has a maximum patition size of 32 GB and a maximmum size of 4GB.
quoted from the book:Understanding Computers, ISBN-13: 978-1-4239-2521-7
I hope that this information can help you to decide. [:)]
Title: Re: What's the difference between FAT and NTFS?
Post by: LeeE on 31/10/2008 15:46:18: Actually, iirc, FAT32 is newer than NTFS.
Title: What's the difference between FAT and NTFS?
Post by: that mad man on 31/10/2008 20:00:44: erickejah, I think that last bit of that is partly wrong?

If formatting fat32 from within XP or 2000 then the limit is 32gb by design but if you use 98 to format then the size is around >120gb. The down side is that the cluster size then becomes large @ 32k which wastes space for small files.

I.E. A 1k file will then take up 32k of space.
Title: What's the difference between FAT and NTFS?
Post by: erickejah on 06/11/2008 04:14:37: interesting [:o], thanks this goes to my virtual hard mind
Title: What's the difference between FAT and NTFS?
Post by: Alandriel on 09/11/2008 09:51:25: Interesting indeed......

....but does anyone know if FAT and NTFS stands for anything, like

erm ....

Follow All Toads

(https://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimages.smileydb.com%2F1%2F000697.gif&hash=17392a0d2512b44355472fa31b4b3423)

... and who came up with those terms.... and why....

me wants to know [;D]
Title: What's the difference between FAT and NTFS?
Post by: that mad man on 09/11/2008 16:44:31: FAT = File Allocation Table?
NTFS = New Type File System?

I think..

As it a Microsoft thing I presume Bill Gates coined the name.
Title: What's the difference between FAT and NTFS?
Post by: LeeE on 09/11/2008 17:35:30: FAT is indeed an acronym for File Allocation Table.

I remember that when Windows NT was very first released the 'NT' was supposed to stand for New Technology, hence NTFS was widely regarded as an acronym for New Technology File System. However, it seems that 'NT' was derived from the Intel i860 RISC cpu, which was the target processor (the Intel RISC architecture was expected to supplant the x86 architecture) and which was codenamed N-10 (N-10 -> N-Ten -> NT), with the New Technology term being just a marketing phrase that didn't actually mean anything.

As I thought, the NTFS file system was first released with Windows NT 3.1 and therefore predates FAT32.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_NT#Designation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_NT#Designation)