File Size Limit on XP

Rockaway17 wrote on 11/6/2001, 12:16 PM

Just a quick question: I just got Windows XP Professional... does XP alleviate the 4 gigabyte file size limitation that plagued the previous versions of Windows?

Comments

dsanders wrote on 11/6/2001, 12:49 PM

Yes and No. Hows that for an answer! It depends upon how you formatted your partition - what file system did you install?

XP Supports both FAT32 and NTFS file systems:

FAT32 supports file sizes upto 2^32 - 4 Gigabytes
NTFS supports file sizes upton 2^64 - 16 Exabytes (much bigger than your disk!)

If you have FAT32 and need to convert to NTFS, take a look a product called Partition Magic from PowerQuest. It can really come in handy when you need to resize, create, or convert partitions!

Luxo wrote on 11/6/2001, 2:20 PM

Actually, you can convert a FAT32 volume to NTFS by typing this in a command prompt:

convert drive_letter: /fs:ntfs

You can find out how your drive is currently formatted, and whether it's already NTFS, in the details sidebar in MY COMPUTER.

Luxo

FadeToBlack wrote on 11/6/2001, 3:49 PM

Rockaway17 wrote on 11/6/2001, 6:09 PM

I have Fat32. If I convert to NTFS using the method you gave, how will that affect my computer? Aside from the file size limit alleviation?

SHTUNOT wrote on 11/6/2001, 11:54 PM

Just make your OS harddrive NTFS,audio drive FAT32, and the video drive NTFS as well. Fat32 is better for audio performance issues. There is an article at www.prorec.com on optimizing win2000 which explains it in detail. With the OS harddrive NTFS it will be able to read both the other drives[backwards compatible]. A fat32 drive cannot read into a drive thats formatted as NTFS. That way it resolves the issue of video file sizes.

Cheesehole wrote on 11/7/2001, 1:46 AM

i would suggest a different approach.

system drive: FAT32
(this is so you can boot off a dos/win9x disk and do troubleshooting such as editing boot.ini when windows won't boot)

data drive: NTFS
(no file size limitation - the performance issues with NTFS are nominal... i wouldn't bother setting up a separate audio drive in FAT32 unless audio is all you do)

- ben

Cheesehole wrote on 11/7/2001, 2:05 AM

>A fat32 drive cannot read into a drive thats formatted as NTFS.

this is the second time i've seen you post this. can you clarify? if you mean that installing your system on a fat32 drive prevents your OS from accessing a NTFS drive, this is not true. being able to read/write NTFS is a function of the operating system. if you are running NT or 2000 or XP, then you can read/write NTFS drive. the format of your system drive is irrelevant.

- ben

jmpatrick wrote on 11/7/2001, 7:21 AM

I think the reference was to operating systems OTHER than NT/2K/XP...which is correct. Win 9X OS's will not recognize NTFS partitions.

jp

jboy wrote on 11/7/2001, 1:18 PM

Two limitations of NTSF not mentioned-it runs a bit slower than FAT 32, and using it makes using GHOST or other imaging utilities not impossible, but difficult, (you have to run an MS proggie called sysprep to remove security tags before ghosting images).