What s the difference between FAT 32 and NTFS?

There are two kinds of FAT, FAT16 and FAT32 partition format, FAT32 format can make each partition have 2 to the 32nd power, that is: 4294967296 clusters, each cluster has a maximum of 64 sectors, each sector has 512 bytes, so that each partition can reach 2TB capacity. In a partition of no more than 8GB, each cluster of FAT32 partition format is fixed at 4KB, which greatly reduces the waste of disk space compared to FAT16, which improves disk utilization.

There are also some problems with the FAT32 format, which does not maintain backward compatibility. When the partition is less than 512M, FAT32 does not work. A single file cannot be larger than 4G.

On the NTFS partition, each file or folder can be assigned a separate license, which provides a higher level of security for these resources, whether users access NTFS-licensed resources locally or over a remote network. NTFS supports compression of individual files or directories. This compression is different from the compression of the drive volume in the FAT structure, and its controllability and speed are much better than the disk compression of the FAT.

For hard disks with more than 4GB, using NTFS partitions can reduce the number of disk fragments and greatly improve the utilization rate of hard disks. The file size that NTFS can support can reach 64GB, which is much larger than the 4GB under FAT32; Long file names are supported.

Partition size FAT16 cluster size FAT32 cluster size NTFS Cluster size 512MB to 1GB 16KB 4KB 512bytes1GB to 2GB 32KB 4KB 512bytes2GB to 8GB Unavailable 4KB 512bytes8GB to 16GB Unavailable 8KB 512bytes16GB to 32GB Unavailable 16KB 512bytes32GB or more Unavailable 32KB 52KB unavailable

FAT and NTFS have their own advantages and disadvantages.

For FAT, especially FAT32, it has a higher utilization rate for hard disks and is more flexible.

For NTFS, the main security is higher, and you can configure permissions on files and folders, for example, assigning a disk partition (such as D drive) can only be read by administrator users, so other users cannot use D drive.

FAT 32 is mostly used for Win98, DOS, the maximum hard disk is 32GB, it does not have system error recovery, and it has built-in file security features. Ideal for small capacity hard drives.

NTFS is mostly used in WinNT and above systems, with a maximum hard disk of 2TB, system error recovery, and built-in file security functions. Suitable for high-capacity hard drives.

Although most systems support FAT 32, NTFS is recommended.

There is no noticeable difference, but XP is very popular with NTFS