Any performance gain using NTFS

[llemor]

Hi,

I'm running WinXP Pro operating system in my P4 computer with FAT32 file system.

If I convert it to NTFS, is there any performance gain?

[Doom9]

isn't that the wrong forum? well.. not anymore ;)

the answer is no.. in fact ntfs is even a bit slower. however, there are many reasons still to use it.. it is generally the more stable filesystem (I never had to run scandisc a single time except for when I had a bad HD), more crash resistant, there's less fragmentation, it offers encryption and quotas and it doesn't have the 4GB maximum filesize limit (especially important when you're into capturing). But if these features say nothing to you then you should definitely stay with your current setup.

[llemor]

Thanks Doom9, I have follow-up question.

Would you recommend FAT32 to a machine dedicated as web server, not considering security feature (offered by NTFS)?

Sorry for posting in wrong forum, I didn't notice PC hardware section.:(

[Doom9]

Sorry for posting in wrong forum, I didn't notice PC hardware section. everybody is entitled to making a honest mistake ;)

for a web server I'd probably go for NTFS considering it's less error prone (I'm assuming the box will be on 24/7)..

[canadian_fbi]

i just converted my FAT32 drive to NTFS under windows xp and i have to say that it seems a bit slower. i do like being able to capture 12 GB video files onto my hd though :) and the conversion is quite painless too.

[buba king]

NTFS Slower?! i wanna see that!

http://www.digit-life.com/articles/ntfs/

very interesting read.. after reading this you will select NTFS :)

btw NTFS(5.1) is faster than FAT32...

[canadian_fbi]

probably it's just slower when it's converted from fat32 due to fragmentation issues and whatnot. i think the MFT can more easily get fragmented when it's converted - i know mine has at least one fragmentation. but i need a new hard drive anyway so i don't want to place all the blame on FAT32 -> NTFS conversion :)

[theReal]

I think NTFS is only slower if the indexing service (I'm not sure if this is the English name for it) is on for all drives (like it is by default). If you turn that off, it's at least the same as FAT32.

I don't really care because I hate FAT32 for it's 4GB file size limit. It has given me a bad time more than once, and I just feel free with NTFS. I can save everything without worrying about the 4GB limit! :)

[tiki4]

I don't wonder that your NTFS drive gets quite slow after converting from FAT32. The point is you get an NTFS drive with 512 byte cluster size which is very small and doesn't make too much sense if you don't store many very small files on it.
Reformatting is the way to go: With a clean format you get a cluster size of 4 kByte which is the same as on FAT32 (standard cluster size). I've got two 60 GB Maxtor drives in my machine, one NTFS, one FAT32. For capturing in Windows 2000 only the NTFS drive is really usable as the second one seems too slow to write 768x576 Huffy files in real time.

tiki4

[theReal]

You can format FAT32 drives with cluster sizes of 16k to make them faster for capturing. You can also format NTFS with cluster sizes bigger than 4k, but most defragmenting programs then won't work anymore. However, the XP defragmenting tool and one other defragmenting program, I think it is Speeddisk, can also handle NTFS with bigger cluster sizes.

[orionware]

I have my system split between fat32 and ntfs running XP. My OS directory is fat32 and my backup directory is FAT32 because I wanted to use Ghost 2002 to backup my system.

The other partitions are NTFS for the stability and so I when dumping an hour of DV I don't have to worry about the filesize limit.

As for a webserver, I'd recommend ext3, but then again you would have to install Redhat or Mandrake Linux to use it :)


I'd also recommend a raid setup for doing heavy a/v work. I have dual ATA133 100 Gig drives and the things FLY when moving files several gig in size around.

O