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File Systems Exposed (Part 2)

By Mohammad Yousef | August 2004

[Back to Part 1]

In my previous article, I gave a brief explanation about file systems and I implied that, in general, NTFS is the right choice. Now, I'll tell you the reasons that make NTFS more powerful than FAT or FAT32.

1. NTFS is the best file system for large drives. Unlike FAT and FAT32, performance with NTFS isn't corrupted as drive size increases.

2. One of the major security features in NTFS is encryption or, in other words, the process of disguising a message or data in such a way as to hide its substance.

3. Another feature in NTFS is disk quotas. It gives you the ability to monitor and control the amount of disk space used by each user.

4. Using NTFS, you can keep access control on files and folders and support limited accounts. In FAT and FAT32, all files and folders are accessible by all users no matter what their account type is.

5. Domains can be used to tweak security options while keeping administration simple.

6. Compression available in NTFS enables you to compress files, folders, or whole drives when you're running out of disk space.

7. Removable media (such as tapes) are made more accessible through the Remote Storage feature.

8. Recovery logging helps you restore information quickly if power failures or other system problems occur.

However, there are 2 drawbacks for NTFS. Old software might not run on NTFS properly. Secondly, if you're going to run an earlier version of Windows along with Windows XP, you'll need to have a FAT or FAT32 as the start-up partition. The reason is that most earlier versions of Windows can't access a partition with the latest version of NTFS.

So now, my fellow readers, you should have enough knowledge regarding file systems to know whether you want to opt for NTFS or not. If you're interested in switching your file system to NTFS, stay tuned for the third and last part of "File Systems Exposed" in which I'll guide you to convert your file system to NTFS.

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