I have 2 Acer laptops which belong to my daughters, basic machines 40Gb hard drives win xp home 256mb ram Sempron 3000 processors. Acer always provide
their kit with the hard drives as Fat32. I have always understood that NTFS is more efficient both spacewise & speedwise, am I correct in this?
I seem to recall that to swap from Fat 32 to NTFS is a few clicks of the mouse within the accessories & tools section, am I also correct in
this?
If I swap from Fat 32 to NTFS is there any danger of loss of data, corruption of the hard drive/XP etc.
Thanx in advance for your input O wise ones.
I always though that the swap from NTFS from FAT 32 was easy, but to reverse it was impossible once done, dont know if thats right or not someone else will say
I didn't think that XP would run on fat32?
FAt32 to NTFS is a one way only transfer. It is possible to swap back but not easy.
A good reason to stick to FAt is that if your operating system screws up you can still get to the data 'easilly' NTFS is a little more
dificult.
I wouldnt rush to move to NTFS, though security is better. dont think you would see much impovement in laptop performance.
Regards
Agriv8
Yep as others have said . Its usually a one way thing.
NTFS is more robust than FAT thogh FAT is simpler to fix when things go really bad.
Personally on a laptop I preferr NTFS as laptops tend to get more flat battery shutdowns e.t.c that NTFS is better at recovering from.
I agree i thought Xp was based on NT4.0, so always used NTFS. but to there is no difference in space thats down to the hard drives hardware. as for
speed i would be very surprised if u noticed anything at all on a sempron. its a low cache CPU if i remember so i wouldn't both, its it aint
broke don't fix it
John
I have an Acer laptop and converted to NTFS once after getting a Fat32 error and I can't remember what happened but I know it was a pain in the arris so got it put back to Fat 32. Dunno anymore than that, my brother just does it all for me but I would definitely stick as you are, especially if it ain't broken.
For what its worth, the quickest way to speed up the machines is to stick some extra RAM in there - they must be pretty slow with 256mb at present.
You wouldn't notice much difference at all altering the file structure...
Mark.
To convert from FAT to NTFS go to a cammand prompt and type the following, but only after reading the rest of the message
convert drive_letter: /fs:ntfs
(Just change the drive_letter to c: )
While NTFS is the recommended way to go I doubt you will notice much if any difference, and as has been said already it makes it more difficult, for
most, should you have a boot problem.
It can be more efficient, although it depends a lot on what you store on it and what size files you have, i.e. if you store lots of big MM files you
could use a larger cluster size (NTFS supports up to 64k) but this can play havoc with drive space and if you go too far the other way i.e. 512B you
drive could suffer a drastic slow down although you would probably increase the available space by doing so.
But best advice would probably be, if it aint broke, don't fix it!
Cheers
Alex
I also have an Acer laptop, it came with XP Pro, and FAT32. I have never had a problem with it. It has an AMD Athalon XP-M 2600+ processor. I did
upgrade the RAM as an option when I bought it about 3 years ago.
The only minus point I have encountered with this being FAT32 is the 'Back-Up' utility, it doesn't like the partitions.
So I just back up my work on a seperate external HDD, and hope for the best!
I am certainly not a computer techie, but I would agree, with increasing the RAM, and as for file system, if it aint broke don't fix it! 
My PC has the NTFS system, and I find very little difference with speed etc.
Fozzie 
Edit to say...Alex you posted as I was writing......we have come out with the same thing, even down to the 'saying'......
[Edited on 9/11/06 by Fozzie]
Thanx for all the advice guys - think I got the message - if it ain't broke, don't fix it!
Cheers Russ
NTFS is a better file system, it's quicker, more secure and a hell of a lot more efficient, as a user you won't really notice the difference though. Converting isn't something to worry about, type the command into a command prompt, reboot the PC and it's done. Stick more Ram in if possible and it should zip along nicely.
quote:
Originally posted by chockymonster
NTFS is a better file system, it's quicker,
im not saying your wrong, but because it has more to do doesn't mean its slower, its a much later development and the actual functions are
probably much more efficient.
At a guess ide say it would be faster as NT, XP and Server 2k3 all use NTFS and need to be faster as they are more geared towards networking and
server use.
BTW does anyone knwo what vists a based on, is it NTFS or a nice shiny new thing? i know it was originally bing developed as an XP add on but i have
also herd that the file storing is more designed around a RDBMS concept
Vista was supposed to ship with the nice shiny new FS however..... Microshaft have removed that from the release product (too many problems getting it to work in time) and Vista will run on the usual selection of Fat32 or NTFS
quote:
At a guess ide say it would be faster as NT, XP and Server 2k3 all use NTFS and need to be faster as they are more geared towards networking and server use.
quote:
Originally posted by MikeRJ
quote:
Originally posted by chockymonster
NTFS is a better file system, it's quicker,
Generaly NTFS is slower than FAT32 because of the rather large overhead it has to handle with file security and permissions.