formats

[Diroga]

what's the difference between FAT32 NFTS

[Zack]

AFAIK they are simply different methods of formatting hard drives. I also think that NTFS is slightly more efficient, but I'm not sure,
Google it.

[Agamemnus]

Interesting question.

Zack: that's correct.

Look:
http://www.ntfs.com/ntfs_vs_fat.htm

[Zack]

I'm right, I'm right! :bounce:
Hehe - but NTFS's efficiency is destroyed by the annoyance of not being able to access your harddrive from an MSDOS bootdisk.

[Diroga]

what? so does NTFS even have a boot disk?

[Zack]

Well - my HD is formatted via NTFS. And msdos can't read any NTFS-formatted disks. So...No real msdos for me.
And NTFS wouldn't have a bootdisk - a bootdisk is just some disk or disc you make containing a barebones OS, often MSDOS. For me, I like real MSDOS mode. And I can't access my Harddrive from MSDOS because MSDOS can't understand NTFS formatting.
See?

[Diroga]

so what do you do when your OS goes crazy and wont boot? no boot disk then right?

[LooseCaboose]

A disk, whether it is a harddrive, floppy disk or something else is usually arrange as a number of clusters, sectors, etc. This isn't a very user friendly way of storing inforamtion on them. Operating systems provide a file system to make organising data on disk much easier, the file system is what provides files, folders, access permissions and more fancy stuff such as shortcuts and compression.

FAT32 is the 32bit File Allocation Table filesystem that is commonly used with later versions of Win9x, it doesn't provide a great deal of integrity or access permissions for individual users. NTFS stands for New Technology File System and is much more advanced than FAT32. NTFS is a journaling filesystem, which means that if the computer is turned off half way through writting a file, NTFS can do a rollback in its journal to recover a good copy of the file.

One drawback of NTFS is that because of its large table and header sizes, it isn't great for partitions under 10mb in size, which rules out most disks. Windows NT won't let you format disks with NTFS, but there are 3rd party tools which let you do so.

Bootdisks don't usually have a conventional filesystem, as Zack said, they are very barebones, just enough to hold the boot image for the operating system.