Many times this situation comes whenever we tried to format a system using windows xp cd, at the of the partition creation it asks to choose the format from FAT or NTFS. Now for those attempting the process for the first time this may be one of the weird situation to decide what these options are? So here are the details which you may need is such a situation………

FAT or NTFS: Which one to Choose:

For the users already using Windows XP or later there is no question which one to choose as NTFS is the obvious choice. Why? Because of its more advanced security advantages which were not found in other file system…. which are FAT6, FAT32 …. FAT means File Allocation table while NTFS stands for NT file system.

Now what are FAT16 and FAT32 file systems are; let’s we comes to first one FAT16 – This file system was introduced in 1981 with MSDOS..  isn’t this such a very old file system, so was its limitations. At that time it was only designed to handle floppy drive, and has had minor modifications over the years so it can handle hard disks, and even file names longer than the original limitation of 8.3 characters, but it’s still the lowest common denominator. Even being old there is also an added advantage with this file system, it can be accessed via any file system in existence these days and is compatible across a wide variety of operating systems, including Windows 95/98/Me, OS/2, Linux, and some versions of UNIX. Now why it is out of fashion, the biggest problem of FAT16 is that it has a fixed maximum number of clusters per partition, and hard these days gets bigger and bigger, hence, the size of each cluster has to get larger. In a 2GB partition, each cluster is 32 kilobytes, meaning that even the smallest file on the partition will take up 32 KB of space. FAT16 also doesn’t support compression, encryption, or advanced security using access control lists. And now the second one FAT32….this was first introduced with the Windows 95 Service Pack 2… as an extension of FAT16 file system to provide a much larger number of clusters per partition. Though overall it greatly improves the disk performance utilizing the bigger clusters… apart from this enhancement it shares all other limitations of FAT16 system but with an added disadvantage many operating systems that can recognize FAT16 will not work with FAT32 most notably Windows NT, but also Linux and UNIX as well. But this problem was limited that time only now if you at least windows XP running you can share your drive out to other computers on your network they don’t need to know (and generally don’t really care) what your underlying file system is.

So that’s all discussed with file system related to FAT16  or fat32 now what is the advantage of having NTFS over FAT…

The NTFS file system, introduced with first version of Windows NT, is a completely different file system from FAT. It provides for greatly increased security, file compression, quotas, and even encryption. It is the default file system for new installations of Windows XP, and if you’re doing an upgrade from a previous version of Windows, you’ll be asked if you want to convert your existing file systems to NTFS. Don’t worry. If you’ve already upgraded to Windows XP and didn’t do the conversion then, it’s not a problem. You can convert FAT16 or FAT32 volumes to NTFS at any point. Just remember that you can’t easily go back to FAT or FAT32 (without reformatting the drive or partition), not that I think you’ll want to.

The NTFS file system is generally not compatible with other operating systems installed on the same computer, nor is it available when you’ve booted a computer from a floppy disk. For this reason, many system administrators, myself included, used to recommend that users format at least a small partition at the beginning of their main hard disk as FAT. This partition provided a place to store emergency recovery tools or special drivers needed for reinstallation, and was a mechanism for digging yourself out of the hole you’d just dug into. But with the enhanced recovery abilities built into Windows XP (more on that in a future column), I don’t think it’s necessary or desirable to create that initial FAT partition.

So you have learned all about the all the file system we have with Winodws now when to use them?
If you’re running more than one operating system on a single computer, you will definitely need to format some of your volumes as FAT. Any programs or data that need to be accessed by more than one operating system on that computer should be stored on a FAT16 or possibly FAT32 volume. But keep in mind that you have no security for data on a FAT16 or FAT32 volume???any one with access to the computer can read, change, or even delete any file that is stored on a FAT16 or FAT32 partition. In many cases, this is even possible over a network. So do not store sensitive files on drives or partitions formatted with FAT file systems.