What is ntfs and fat32

Australia
March 12, 2008 6:26pm CST
Hi, I had my computer for about a year now and have just discovered that I seem to have 2 hard drives. C: is the main drive which has everything on it and is NTFS and I also have D: which has nothing in it that is FAT32. Does anyone know what this means and what I would use drive D: for? Both drives are the same size.
2 people like this
4 responses
@Taskr36 (13963)
• United States
12 Mar 08
NTFS is a newer and more secure method of formatting hard drives. NTFS is also faster and works with larger hard drives. In an FAT32 formatted drive you can not have files larger than 4GB. While it's not likely for the average computer user to have files that large, I have many ISO files that are over 4GB with some even being closer to 8GB. Either way, unless you are running an old Windows 95 or 98 machine, you definitely should use NTFS instead of FAT 32 whenever there is an option. You don't need to change your old drive that is already FAT32 though so just leave that one as it is unless you reformat it at another time.
2 people like this
• Australia
12 Mar 08
Thanks for the info. I am running Windows XP media edition. My computer is also dual core which I was told is supposed to make it run faster. What do I use drive D: for? It seems that it is just sitting there doing nothing.
@Taskr36 (13963)
• United States
13 Mar 08
Dual core doesn't make your computer faster per se, it helps your computer multitask more effectively. Basically you won't get slowdowns from multiple applications running at the same time. Since your computer is always running different processes you should immediately get performance gains over single core processors. As for your D drive it depends. I have multiple hard drives with the secondary drives being used primarily for storage to keep my main drive from getting filled up. On most store-bought PCs the D drive is actually a recovery partition that can be used to restore Windows if something happens.
1 person likes this
• Malaysia
4 May 08
if you never know you have 2 hard disk drives before then D: is your virtual hdd. it is a partition that exists in the same hdd as your C: partition. this is normal with computers existing after win98 era your C: is probably crowded by now so you can use D: for whatever thing you might want but i would suggest moving all your documents, files, pictures, songs, whatever you have in mind (especially the important ones) in D: and leave the C: for your software. this way your files can be saved if C: is infected by stubborn viruses that requires you to re-format your hdd (format the C: and leave the D: the way it is so you can still retrieve your files later) but nothing could save your important files if a physical damage happens to your hdd (i've had it twice) you can also install things in D: but it is not recommended since your computer will have to do some extra work fetching the needed stuff from D: to C: and processing it in C: leave sufficient free space in your C: so your computer can make full use of the virtual memory using the free space you can also use D: partition to install another os (different platform or different version) but you probably won't do this
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• Australia
4 May 08
Thank you for your detailed and plain english explanation. It is very much appreciated.
@mvpriyank (407)
• India
13 Mar 08
NTFS is New Technology File System.It supports new operating systems such as windows XP,NT,Vista etc etc about Windows (* cannot be installed in NTFS drives.NTFS has good security features. And FAT is File allocation Table.It supports all the operating systems but does not have new features as NTFS. Have a nice day!! Keep Posting!!
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@edstewar (35)
• Philippines
13 Mar 08
ntfs and fat 32 are formats of your systems in hard drive fat32 is the older version and ntfs is the new version, just change your systems 32 format to ntfs. But still ntfs can read fat32 format but fat32 cannot read ntfs format. it should be the same. so that your fat32 format can read ntfs format. it can be done during installation of operating systems.
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