But i dont want NTFS!

Hello,

Its always got to know that this forum is here to save me when i get in too deep!

Anyways.... I recently got a new external hard disk (120gb) and a hard disk enclosure. Ive put the HDD in the enclosure and hooked it up. Everything seems fine but when i try to create a new partition it asks me what 'file system to use'. Now, i dont really know the difference but the install guide tells me i want FAT32 but the only option available is NTFS.



Any ideas why i cant choose FAT32?



Anyhelp would be really appreciated.

Windows XP can't format to FAT32 (to my knowledge anyway, correct me if I'm wrong). I don't see why there would be a problem using NTFS unless the drive is going to interact with a win9x and winXP system

I am running WinXP but it says my internal harddisk are in FAT32. Well i think, im a bit out of my depth here. In the disk management, next to my hard disk it has two blocks one says 'Vaio (C:) 10.00 GB FAT32 Healthy (System)' and the other says 'Vaio (D:) 8.63 GB FAT32 Healthy'. I assume that means im in FAT32.

Well I also use FAT32 instead of NTFS. The easiest way to format the whole HDD with FAT32 would be with a Windows ME / 98SE startup disk. Then run fdisk from there. This will format the whole thing. Windows XP can format with FAT32 but only 40 gigabytes max! So therefore if you, like me, wanna stick with FAT32 on all my drives, I suggest you use Fdisk and enjoy the good old FAT32. And one thing...keep in mind that FAT32 is best when under 40 gigs. SO create partitions. The easiest way ou is to format with NTFS I guess... and you will not need to worry about anything...except the cross OS compatibility issues.



JAN

Its starting to make sense. The reason i cant use FAT32 is because its a 120Gb harddisk that im trying to format. Its looking like the easiest thing is going to be to use NTFS. What sort of problems will that cause if my internal HDDs are FAT32?



Im only really going to use the external HDD to save music, films and to back up 'my documents'.

I believe it's 32gb max. Had this dilemma when I formatted a LaCie external hard disk that I needed to transport between PC and Mac. Macs can't write to NTFS, they can only read from it (using the latest Mac OS X).

Read this chart about NTFS AND FAT

Win Xp can run either fat32, or NTFS...the main difference between the two is security...mainly fat32 has none LOL you can use the convert tool to go from NTFS to FAT32...but I guess this doesn't work in your case.....the only way to change it is to format....there is nothing wrong with NTFS on winxp you will be fine

i

It can .. I dunno why you'd want to use FAT32 tho



You can use something like Partition magic as well

If you dual boot your machine with Win 98 and XP and you want your XP partition to be accesible when running Win 98. (but since there is no mention of dual-booting in this thread... then no, there would be no advantage to using Fat32)


Here is another good link:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/h...oc/en/ntfs.asp