Re: Change file system on new HD?



Paul J Gans wrote:
Dave Royal <dave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
...I was surprised to find that the disk was FAT32, and the first thing XP did was reformat it to NTFS. Odd.

Not really. Disk areas are assigned by "cluster". The driver
a file cluster by cluster. On average the last cluster is only
half filled.

In FAT32 for various reasons, mostly addressibility, as the disk
size grows, the cluster size grows. So on large disks (bigger
than a few dozen gigabytes) the cluster size is enormous. Thus
there is a HUGE amount of wasted space.

What I meant was: why wasn't the drive preformatted to NTFS - which is what I was expecting?

Dave

--
(Remove any numerics from my email address.)
.



Relevant Pages

  • Re: Cant boot XP NTFS HDD cloned from FAT32 HDD
    ... usually does not offer to change the partition type. ... FAT32 was not offered probably because I clicked on XP as my OS. ... This is because disk ... is it possible that the partition you formatted as NTFS was ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.basics)
  • RE: Incorrect Disk Space reading
    ... How to Locate and Correct Disk Space Problems on NTFS Volumes in Windows XP ... cannot find the cause or locate the folders and files that cause the NTFS ... The Cluster Size Is Too Large ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.hardware)
  • Re: File Searching, how to speed it up?
    ... If you have more data than FAT32 can hold, use ntfs with a larger cluster ... If the average disk queue length goes over 2 it does terrible things ... Nested, 120 files per folder, 60 of those folders for each parent ...
    (microsoft.public.dotnet.framework.performance)
  • Re: NTFS vs FAT32
    ... Water from the same tap goes into two different containers, one round, one ... You can run NTFS and FAT32 partitions, ... Meaning my XP is running in NTFS, but my data is saved in FAT32 Disk D.> ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.basics)
  • Re: NTFS vs FAT32
    ... If I copy a file from Disk C (NTFS) with a spesific security permitions to ... Disk D (FAT32) and then copy it back, ... The file system has no effect on the data. ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.basics)