Fat 16 or 32

[Mort]

Hi everyone,
Just picked up a Maxtor Plus60 / 40gig.
First,is it possible to have "C" set as fat 16 and the balance
partitions "D" + "E" as fat 32?

I have read that fat 16 is faster than fat 32.
Also, would it work to have "D" as fat 16 ( 1 gig)and only for
my virtual memory?


Do any of you set-up this way?

Thanks,
Mort

 

[Noriaki]

I don't know if FAT16 is faster or not...

But I have a 390MB FAT16 (it's FAT16 because FAT32 can't be that small) partiton at the beginning of my 2nd hard drive and several FAT32 partitions after it, and it works just fine.

 

[Agamar]

Now WHYwould you, being a member of Anandtech, even think that Fat 16 is faster than Fat 32?

 

[Zucchini]

faster? not really, its just way inefficient with larger harddrives.. anything over a gig becomes really bad If your going to run 40 partitions, then fine. otherwise stay far far away from fat16.

 

[Ulysses]

As you probably know:

FAT 32 partitions use disk space more efficiently than FAT 16, & can be greater than 2 GB. Use FAT 16 with DOS, Windows 3.1X or early Windows 95.

 

[spamboy]

Good call Agamar. FAT16 is slower than FAT32, according to Microsoft, and it also uses more space on the disk to hold a given amount if info.

 

[Mort]

Why I think fat 16 is faster was from "Lostcircuits Hard Drive
install guide"

http://www.lostcircuits.com/advice/hdd2.html

That's all I know about it,and all that I will "admit to"

PS:How do I make the link work?

Thanks to all!
Mort

 

[Rand]

Noriaki, FAT32 can be used on a 390MB HDD. It's just Windows that won't let you partition is that way. I've partitioned drives as small as 120MB as FAT32 using Partition Magic.

 

[AndyHui]

Actually, in a limited number of situations, FAT16 IS faster than FAT32. Remember that to look up a file, the OS has to read the FAT first. FAT16 is much smaller than FAT32, and therefore faster to look up.

 

[Guilty]

Yes that is why the tweaking crazy put their 9x OS as FAT16... to shave 3 seconds off startup. It's really not worth it in my opinion, but your plans are feasible.

 

[ElFenix]

microsoft is only claiming that fat 32 is faster cuz they want people to use it. its an outright lie. storagereview's benches drop significantly going from fat 16 to fat 32. frankly NTFS is the best file system, almost all the speed of fat 16 with the large disk support of fat 32.

 

[Noriaki]

Rand: Really? hehe I thought it was almitation of Fat32 that you couldn't go under 500MB.

 

[Mort]

Just want to thank everyone for their info.
Mort

 

[Sunner]

Go FAT32, the speed difference is insignificant on any modern computer with a decent HD(pretty much anything 5400+ RPM).

I used to run my OS on a FAT32 drive back in the days of 9x, but once I changed it to FAT32, mostly by mistake, I didnt notice any difference at all, so I kept it.

 

[steelnewfie]

Go with win2K and NTFS, more efficient, better security...do NOT use fat16...

 

[wyvrn]

Mort, links work like this: {l=Whatever}www.whatever.com{/l} , just substitute straight brackets instead of curly ones.

 

[Basse]

Even if FAT16 is supposedly faster than FAT32, you'd spend more time remembering where you put that MP3 if you have 20 2047MB partitions on that 40GB Maxtor (great choise by the way!)

I have one partition currently set aside for my VM (1,5GB also located on different IDE channel), and I'd recommend this because your disk will get fragmented in time and affect the pagefile.sys.

I run W2K by the way.

/B

 

[Dufusyte]

To make a link, just click on the blue "http" thingie in the row above the box where you are typing your message. (you will find it)