FAT 32 or NTFS

killbillvol2

I've bought a Western Digital My Book External Hard Drive (500GB). The file system is FAT 32. I seem to remember reading somewhere that NTFS would be better?

I'll be using it to backup my laptop and to store photos and music. Do I leave it or change? (And if so, how?).

Thanks.

Ghost Train

fat32 should be fine for photos and music
ntfs is better in some respects(for larger files)
fat32 might be more compatible with dvd players or other devices you might connect to, older os's, non windows os's.
for just using with windows xp ntfs probably best

AlmightyCushion

If I remember correctly fat32 doesn,t support files over 4GB so if are using it to back up files greater than 4GB stay away from it.

melekalikimaka

fat 32 is inefficent and for large amounts of small files or large files (over 4 gb each, ntfs is the way to go, fat 32 is useless, other os's don't have a problem reading it, merely writing it(which is slowly improving)

killbillvol2

Thanks lads. Went ahead and converted. I thought it would take ages but it only took about a minute.

McSandwich

killbillvol2 wrote:

Thanks lads. Went ahead and converted. I thought it would take ages but it only took about a minute.

Probably a bit late but in my experience NTFS isn't the most reliable for removable drives.

Make sure that the set the drive policy (under properties) is set for quick removal and not performance. Also make sure to do a safe removal before disconnecting the drive. Otherwise you might need to reformat, a lot....

BostonB

If you ever need to recover data from a drive its a lot easier from a FAT drive than a NTFS drive. That said if you have more than one backup on more than one drive thats really never an issue.