FAT32 vs. NTFS

uplandtennis wrote on 5/13/2003, 2:27 PM

Just got a 120G Western Digital 1394 external drive. It came pre-formatted in FAT32.
I am running Win2000. Any advantage formatting in NTFS?

Comments

sacherjj wrote on 5/13/2003, 2:28 PM

You absolutely want to format it NTFS. There are no filesize limitations on NTFS. I believe FAT32 is limited to 4 Gig files. This means that your DV video must be cut into 13-14 minutes sections.

riredale wrote on 5/13/2003, 7:51 PM

FAT32 is limited to 4GB, or about 18:30 of DV material. With Vegas, the 4GB limitation is irrelevant, since it transparently creates additional avi files if your video is longer than 18 minutes.

If you think you might need to have the material on your disk readable by previous versions of Windows, stick with FAT32. Otherwise, go for NTFS.

You can switch back and forth by using PartitionMagic.