Re: to FAT or not to FAT?

From: Lanwench [MVP - Exchange] (lanwench_at_heybuddy.donotsendme.unsolicitedmail.atyahoo.com)
Date: 08/25/04 

Date: Wed, 25 Aug 2004 11:01:38 -0400

John Doue wrote:
> me wrote:
>
>> if you're gonna run dos games through windows, fat is not necessary
>> pick whatever filesystem you want, just be mindful of the partition
>> limits fat - 2gb
>> fat32 -64gb
>>
>>
>> "Shelley" <anonymous@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
>> news:c8a401c489fe$21992680$a601280a@phx.gbl...
>>
>>> When installing Win2000 on an existing machine, is it
>>> correct to choose FAT, FAT32, or the updated file system?
>>> The only reason I can think of to want DOS on the system
>>> is to run some old DOS games. If I upgrade my file system,
>>> what do I lose?
>>
>>
>>
> Choosing NTFS means you would lose the ability to use most disk
> utilies in case of problems.

...well, FAT tends to have a lot more problems....and NTFSDOS will let you
boot from a floppy & see your data just fine.

> For the average user, including me, Fat
> 32 is the way to go. The additional benefits of NTFS are mostly
> valuable for IT professionals. NTFS is supposed to be safer, but it
> is more complicated to manage, slower (because of the additional
> complexity of file handling) and recovering from a crash involving
> file problems in NTFS is much much more difficult.

I don't know about that - I use NTFS even on people's home PCs, and haven't
had problems with it. It's fairly 'self healing' and isn't prone to
fragmentation as badly as FAT is. But to each their own.
>
> With regards to partition size limitations, anyway, I do not advise
> very large partitions since the bigger they are, the more data you
> have to recover after a crash (file crashes seldom involve more than
> one partition). But computing is about individual choices...

I always set up at least two partitions - one for system files/programs, and
one for data. If there's an OS problem, I can just reinstall over the system
partition and not lose data.
>
> Regards

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