Advantage/Disadvantage of reformatting backup drive to NTFS

[franjewy]

Hi, everyone! My apologies if this has already been discussed (searched for a discussion; didn't find any).

What are the advantages/disadvantages/problems(?) with using an external drive that is formatted FAT32 to backup up a NTFS primary drive under Windows XP with TI9?

Is it preferable to format the external drive to NTFS?
Presuming you have nothing but NTSF drives to backup.
Thanks.

[TheWeaz]

FAT32 can only handle files as large as ~4GB, so any image you create that's larger than that will automatically be split into smaller pieces.
Here's a link to other differences: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/winxppro/maintain/convertfat.mspx
Can't really think of any disadvantages to NTFS. UNLESS ... you plan on attaching the drive to a system that can't read NTFS.

[Menorcaman]

Perhaps also worth adding that, because NTFS is a much more complex and robust file system, basic file transfers to and from a FAT32 drive will usually be slightly faster. Personally, I feel that the added security of NTFS far outweighs the slight speed advantage of FAT32.

Regards

[seekforever]

-{ Quote: "Perhaps also worth adding that, because NTFS is a much more complex and robust file system, basic file transfers to and from a FAT32 drive will usually be slightly faster. Personally, I feel that the added security of NTFS far outweighs the slight speed advantage of FAT32.

Regards" }-

I agree and FAT32 is only considered to be faster for small files. Unfortunately, I can't find a definition of small files. I have also read that modern PCs with lots of memory give no reason to use FAT32 unless you want to run an OS or an obscure app that requires it. Like the man said, "NTFS is a file system, FAT is just a table of entries".