Partitions - FAT or NTFS?

How much FAT do you have!

Best Practice (Litmus Test)

Professionals: Format every partition with NTFS

Amateurs use FAT32 where ever possible

NTFS Partitions

The traditional reason to use NTFS was for file level security.  However, the number one reason that I recommend NTFS on all partitions is, NTFS has 'write ahead' logs which protect the file system.  This transaction logging, is similar to the method that databases use to record events before they are committed to disk.

There are more technical benefits to formatting NTFS:

• Faster recovery through checkpoint files
• More efficient storage of smaller files
• More efficient indexing
• Faster file access, especially for large disks

NTFS is a pre-requisite for important Windows 2000 features:

• Active Directory.  NTDS.dit and its logs must all reside on NTFS
• Disk Quotas
• Mount Points - useful when your c:\ drive is full
• EFS (Encrypted File System)
• DFS (Distributed File System)

Neither FAT nor FAT32 can support any of the above features.  The only indisputable advantage of FAT32 is that you can dual boot into Window 98 - not much of an advantage for a server.

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Command Console (CMDCONS)

For some (amateur) administrators the last stronghold of FAT was the c:\ drive. These Luddites insisted on formatting the c: drive as FAT or FAT 32.  Their justification is :  'so that we can copy files from floppy'.  Guy says: 'Try the Command Console'.  Get the Windows 2000 CD and install with winnt32 \cmdcons.'  With CMDCONS you can boot into a dos like shell and read and copy to NTFS partitions.  You can also stop or start services that maybe preventing a boot.

Note: Do not confuse Command Console with F8 Safe mode, they are two different start up strategies.

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