what is the difference between a FAT and an NFTS volume?

Question

what is the difference between a FAT and an NFTS volume?

Answer 1

In short: NTFS supports larger harddisks then FATand has better protection against errors.



Long:

"FAT (FAT16 and FAT32) and NTFS are two methods for storing data on a hard drive. The hard drive has to either be formatted using one or the other, or can be converted from one to the other (usually FAT to NTFS) using a system tool.



FAT is basically the same file system that has been used on PCs since the early DOS days, with a number of modifications made to allow it to work with larger hard drives. NTFS was originally developed to work in Windows NT, to support large hard drives from the get-go (up to 16 billion gigabytes per volume!) and to guard against the kinds of errors that routinely wreck FAT volumes. NTFS is just the better choice overall at this point and most computers running Windows are running a version of Windows that can handle it (i.e., Windows 2000 or XP). "

Answer 2

FAT stands for file allocation table, its basically an address book of where all the data is stored on your hard drive, their is FAT, FAT32 and NFTS, each one has a limit to the size of data it can record, NFTS can handle the largests drive.

Answer 3

FAT stands for file allocation table, its basically an address book of where all the data is stored on your hard drive, their is FAT, FAT32 and NFTS, each one has a limit to the size of data it can record, NFTS can handle the largests drive.



so basically the main difference is that NFTS can handle a much larger hard drive size.

Answer 4

FAT is the older disk format that was created in the 1980's. It's the basic standard configuration of a HDD that enables data to be located in the various sectors of the HDD and indexed for retrival. As HDD technologies and capacities improved, the 'limits' of the FAT file structure were reached and Microsoft developed "FAT32" so the full capacity of the higher capacity HDD's could be used. Shortly after the 'next generation' of disk formatting was released by Microsoft and they called it NTFS - It is a completely seperate formatting method that is better designed for making use of modern large capacity drives. It is MUCH more efficient way to format your HDD improving the ammount of data you can store on the HDD and the performance.

Answer 5

FAT is older and take up more space. NFTS is newer better organized and takes up less space, unfortunately NFTS is only recognized by newer OSes

Answer 6

FAT32 is not as secure or reliable as the NT based NTFS, but if your NT based OS is down and you want to access the files in an NTFS section of your harddrive but all you have is a win98 ebd (unfortunatly NT based OS's don't have a bootable floppy as they're purly 32bit OS's)the industry term is SOL. So if you ever fear this situation go with FAT32. If not use NTFS.

Answer 7

FAT:

FAT stands for File Allocation Table. The FAT file system was created by Bill Gates in 1977 for managing disk.



FAT12:

The initial version of FAT is now released to as FAT1212 as a file system for floppy disk.



FAT16:

In 1984 IBM released the PC AT with featured a 20 MB hard disk. Microsoft introduce MS DOS 3.0 in parallel cluster addresses were increased to 16 bit.



FAT32:

Microsoft decide to implement a newer generation of FAT, known as FAT 32, with cluster counts held in a 32-bit field. FAT 32 was introduce with windows 95. Windows 2000 and XP can read and write to FAT 32 file system of any size.



NTFS:

NTFS stands for new technology file system. NTFS is the standard file system of windows NT, Windows 2000, windows XP and windows Server. windows version 95, 98, 98SE and ME cannot Nativity read NTFS file system although third-party utilities do easiest for this purpose.

NTFS released Microsoft's previous FAT file system used in MS-DOS and early version of windows. NTFS has several improvements over FAT.Quotas and File compression is introduced in NTFS5.



File System ----- Min Part ------ Max Part ---- Max File

FAT 16 ------------ N/A ------------ 2GB --------- 2GB

FAT 32 ----------- 512MB ----------- 2TB --------- 4GB

NTFS4,5 ---------- 20MB ----------- 15EB --------- N/A



EB (Exabyte) is equal to 1024 TB

Answer 8

well ntfs is way better, as it doesnt crash so often, its more reliable, and i believe fat and fat32 has limitations on a partition's space.

Answer 9

NTFS also support security and encryption.