Comments for Should I convert my FAT32 drives to NTFS?

Comment from Dr Anonymous on 2012-01-08

2012-01-09T04:22:27Z

NTFS is good. But there is another option. UDF.

UDF is only available through the commandline in Windows 7, but it is there.

UDF formatted flash drives can be read under Windows XP, but not written to, which is a good thing.

Blocks all viruses from an XP machine, including autorun ones.

Since Windows 7 removed the ability to run autorun.inf files on flash drives, but can still read & write to a UDF flash drive, it may be a good file system of choice.

It support large file sizes & just may be the best combination of security & speed in what your looking for.

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A comment on: Should I convert my FAT32 drives to NTFS?

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Comment from Effect on 2011-06-18

2011-06-18T13:41:02Z

if you want to be able to listen music to MP3 players, CD player, Auto CD players, use FAT32. NTFS uses a lot of...let's say "resources" that most of the audio devices (besides the PC) can't handle. FAT is obsolete, NTFS won't work. Try FAT32 ;)

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A comment on: Should I convert my FAT32 drives to NTFS?

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Comment from Jean on 2010-10-08

2010-10-09T02:53:42Z

Well done.
Actually, I found that the most efficient way to convert NTFS to FAT32 can be realized perfectly through the newly released software named NTFS to FAT32 Converter, it can easily convert NTFS to FAT32 without data losing. NTFS to FAT32 Converter will be a right-hand file system assistant. Your trouble to convert NTFS to FAT32 will no longer fret you.
http://aomeitech.com/n2f/convert-ntfs-to-fat32.html

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A comment on: Should I convert my FAT32 drives to NTFS?

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Comment from Jan Lam on 2010-07-06

2010-07-06T16:31:17Z

The main reason I convert FAT32 to NTFS is because large files (over 4GB) cannot be copied to a FAT32 drive.

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A comment on: Should I convert my FAT32 drives to NTFS?

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Comment from Mark on 2010-04-08

2010-04-08T13:17:52Z

As far as I see there's very little advantage in having a NTFS Usb stick. FAT32is compatible with more machines including many video machines and cd players and unless you need files greater than 2gb or losing up to 32kb per file would cause you to run out of space, it would in most cases be better to use FAT32 for USB sticks.

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A comment on: Should I convert my FAT32 drives to NTFS?

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Comment from kevin on 2010-03-19

2010-03-19T23:51:47Z

i have a car cd player with a usb port. my flash drive is formatted and defaulted as FAT32, but it wont play in my cd player. it gives me an error message saying that a FAT16 or FAT32 is required...what am i doing wrong???

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A comment on: Should I convert my FAT32 drives to NTFS?

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Comment from Cristie on 2010-01-04

2010-01-05T02:32:47Z

So, given the information here, a good practice would be to format the USB flash to NTFS before using it??

I can't make that generalization - it depends on how you use your flash drive. You might need FAT32 for some computer you plan to use it with.

05-Jan-2010

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A comment on: Should I convert my FAT32 drives to NTFS?

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Comment from Essam on 2008-07-29

2008-07-29T13:46:17Z

Is it possible to read an NTFS drive from DOS ?
If it's possible then what's the best way to do that ?

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A comment on: Should I convert my FAT32 drives to NTFS?

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Comment from Linda on 2007-07-20

2007-07-21T02:05:00Z

I disagree. I have no problem with a 2GB NTFS formatted flash drive being read in BIOS. As flash drives become larger (8 & 16GB) it becomes more significant with someone using them for video, to convert to NTFS. They can still be safely removed without losing data.

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A comment on: Should I convert my FAT32 drives to NTFS?

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Comment from John Ellerington on 2007-07-09

2007-07-09T09:02:16Z

I agree that changing your file system to NTFS is good advice, with one exception - USB flash drives. These generally come formatted as FAT32. A common use for these drives is to back up your BIOS - as far as I know, all BIOS loading programs will only read a USB flash drive that's formatted as FAT32.

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A comment on: Should I convert my FAT32 drives to NTFS?

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Comment from Simon on 2007-07-04

2007-07-04T17:41:11Z

There are quite a few other advantages to NTFS over FAT32 as well, especially under the hood.

For a start, you can't create > 4GB files in FAT32. This can be a problem with things like video editing.

Then there's journalling, which NTFS does and FAT32 doesn't. That's the sort of thing, like backing up regularly, that is completely useless in day-to-day use but you'll be very thankful for if something goes wrong. For example, if there's a power cut in the middle of a write operation, with NTFS the system will use the jornal to automatically clean-up the half-done operation on next boot-up -- with FAT32, you'd have to run CHKDSK /F and hope it finds and fixes it without corrupting any data.

Then there's fragmentation. NTFS is pretty good at keeping performance detriment due to fragmentation to a minimum, especially if the hard disk is less than half full; e.g. through the use of extents ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extent_(file_systems) ). FAT32 has no mechanisms for anticipating or preventing fragmentation at all.

Etc., etc. The point is, for internal hard drives, Microsoft's efforts to try and get people to switch to NTFS are for good reason. Even "Linux currently only handles reading NTFS partitions" is no longer true: ntfs-3g (http://www.ntfs-3g.org) was declared stable on 21 February 2007, and is perfectly capable of writing to NTFS partitions with negligible chance of data loss. NTFS should really be the default choice (especially for >32GB paritions) for anyone trying to decide on a file system.

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A comment on: Should I convert my FAT32 drives to NTFS?

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