Hi guys,
I am about to install portable apps on my giga cube but i was unsure of which file system to format my cube in for best performance. Can anyone tell me which I should use Fat32 or NTFS?
Thanks
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NTFS is a safer form of storing data. FAT32 only allows partitions up to 32 gb in size and I found it as the only way to format my flash drives. If you can use NTFS. This is my personal recommendation.
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eagle scout
Technology can solve all our problems, like using a laptop for a space heater in a cold tent in the middle of winter.
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Actually FAT32 partitions can go up to around 190GB, not 32. And I'd actually recommend FAT32 over NTFS on a removable drive if possible because it's fully compatable with (pretty much)every OS in the world right now, so you won't ever have to worry about the machine not being able to read your drive, if you plug it into a Mac and it's formatted as NTFS.
I've lost a number of hard drives the past few years. By far the MOST DIFFICULT partition to retrieve information from was NTFS.
There is tons of software for retrieving information (or simply repairing) corrupted data and partitions. But the vast majority of easy (and free) of these can do at best a poor job retrieving from NTFS. I don't know whether this is because NTFS is more complicated or simply if its proprietary nature (more so than FAT32) makes development of retrieval software that much more difficult. Either way, software for recovering NTFS is far lacking.
Here are a few simple solutions for retrieving FAT32:
--> Use live Ubuntu or some other live version of Linux. Boot the CD and mount the corrupt Hard Drive and it'll easily deal with clean FAT32 partitions. Not so for NTFS.
--> Use one of hundreds of boot disk programs. Hiren's BootCD is my personal savior.
I've spent the last three days retrieving info from my corrupt hard drive, and the NTFS partition was hell to deal with. FYI, here was the structure:
Logical NTFS
Logical FAT32
Unallocated
Extended
--> Logical FAT32
--> Logical FAT32
--> Logical FAT32
Unallocated
Yes, this is a relatively complicated and strange partition structure. But the least amount of strangeness is around the NTFS partition - one would expect the most trouble from the FAT32 ones! I spent 90% of my time trying to get a paltry THREE OUTLOOK DATABASE FILES off of the darn NTFS partition. Every disk fix program froze up ~52% of the way across the NTFS partition but had no trouble with the FAT32 partitions. Finally I was able to mount the NTFS partition and just use DOS to transfer the files off.
Take it from somebody who has dealt with problem hard drives before: NTFS is hell to fix.
Thanks for your help guys I think I will go with NTFS. I only use XP machines so I should be ok.