Choosing a File System

Whether you’re setting up a new disk or reformatting an existing one, the process of formatting entails choosing a file operating system. The choices available to you depend on the type of media you are formatting. With hard disks, the only options made available by Disk Management are NTFS and exFAT. If you want to format a hard disk in FAT or FAT32, you need to use the command-prompt Format command, with the /FS switch. (Type format /? at the command prompt for details.) The only good reason to do this, however, is for the sake of compatibility with operating systems running Windows 9x. (See “The Advantages of NTFS” on page 906.) If you’re dual-booting with Windows 9x and want the data on the volume you’re formatting to be accessible to the Windows 9x partition, you should choose FAT32. Note that the 16-bit FAT, while still available, is a relic of much older days when disks were dramatically smaller.

If you’re formatting a USB flash drive, on the other hand, FAT32 is a reasonable choice. In the first place, a flash drive is likely to serve at times as a transfer medium, possibly with operating systems running earlier versions of Windows. Secondly, because NTFS is a journaling file operating system, reading and writing files on NTFS disks involves more disk input/output than similar operations on FAT32 disks. Flash drives can perform a finite number of reads and writes before they need to be replaced hence, they will likely have a longer life expectancy under FAT32 than under NTFS.

Choosing Between UDF and Mastered Optical Media

You do not have to format a CD or DVD (using one of the compatible UDF flavors) to store files on it. You can burn files to optical media in the manner introduced by Windows XP by copying files to a temporary folder and transferring them en masse to the CD or DVD.

Using UDF is somewhat more convenient, because it allows you to read and write CD or DVD files as though they were stored on a USB flash drive or floppy disk. But the older method, sometimes called Mastered or ISO, offers greater compatibility with computers running other operating operating systems, and it’s the only method that allows you to burn audio files and play them back on consumer audio devices.

Whatever choice you make, you’ll have to make the same choice the next time you decide you want to transfer files to optical media. The default choice when you use Windows Explorer to burn files is UDF 2.01. To burn a mastered disk, you must explicitly change this option or use third-party software.

The Advantages of NTFS

As compensation for its incompatibility with Windows 9x, NTFS offers a number of important advantages over the earlier FAT and FAT32 file operating systems:

Security On an NTFS volume, you can restrict access to files and folders using permissions. (For information about using NTFS permissions, see “What Are ACLs?” on page 546.) You can add an extra layer of protection by encrypting files if your edition of Windows supports it. On a FAT or FAT32 drive, anyone with physical access to your computer can access any files stored on that drive.

Reliability Because NTFS is a journaling file operating system, an NTFS volume can recover from disk errors more readily than a FAT32 volume. NTFS uses log files to keep track of all disk activity. In the event of a operating system crash, Windows can use this journal to repair file operating system errors automatically when the operating system is restarted. In addition, NTFS can dynamically remap clusters that contain bad sectors and mark those clusters as bad so that the operating operating system no longer uses them. FAT and FAT32 drives are more vulnerable to disk errors.

Expandability Using NTFS-formatted volumes, you can expand storage on existing volumes without having to back up, repartition, reformat, and restore.

Efficiency On partitions greater than 8 GB, NTFS volumes manage space more efficiently than FAT32. The maximum partition size for a FAT32 drive created by Windows is 32 GB; by contrast, you can create a single NTFS volume of up to 16 terabytes (16,384 GB) using default settings, and by tweaking cluster sizes you can ratchet the maximum volume size up to 256 terabytes.

Optimized Storage of Small Files Files on the order of a hundred bytes or less can be stored entirely within the Master File Table (MFT) record, rather than requiring a minimum allocation unit outside the MFT. This results in greater storage efficiency for small files.

exFAT vs. FAT32

Microsoft introduced the Extended FAT (exFAT) file operating system first with Windows Embedded CE 6.0, an operating operating system designed for industrial controllers and consumer electronics devices. Subsequently, exFAT was made available in Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1).

Its principal advantage over FAT32 is scalability. The exFAT file operating system removes the 32-GB volume and 4-GB file-size limitations of FAT32. It also handles more than 1000 files per directory. Its principal disadvantage is limited backward compatibility.

Systems running Windows XP, for example, require a hotfix to read exFAT32 devices, and non-PC consumer electronics devices, at this time, are more likely to be able to read earlier FAT operating systems than exFAT.

If you’re formatting a high-capacity media player and expect to store large video files on it, exFAT might be a good file-operating system choice. If you’re formatting a flash disk to use to transfer data from your Windows operating system to other computers running Windows XP or Windows Vista, you’re probably better off sticking with FAT32. And if you’re planning to take that flash disk to a photo kiosk at your local convenience store, FAT32 is definitely the way to go.