New HDD and windows XP help needed please

[Enverex]

May also be something to do with their fear of Linux.

I has a 60GB FAT32 drive and the waste just depends on the cluster size, as if you read their statement the only thing they says is "It is more suited to NTFS". They don't say anything specific.

Obviously NTFS is better, but still, they are just trying to remove your options.

NS

[Austin]

As most people already know on average you waste half of your cluster size for EVERY file stored so you can easily waste 1-2GB even on 60-80GB HDs let alone 120GB+. For instance my 120GB is 100GB full and holds 120,000 files. When we take a look at cluster sizes we can see how much space is likely to be wasted ...

8x16GB FAT32 partns = 469MB wasted (8KB cluster size)
4x32GB FAT32 partns = 938MB wasted (16KB cluster size)
2x64GB FAT32 partns = 1875MB wasted (32KB cluster size)
1x120GB NTFS partn = 234MB wasted (4KB cluster size)

You also have to rem that NTFS uses compression on certain files (mostly backups and certain system files but you can specify manually too) which reduces waste even further, I only waste 84MB with 4KB NTFS! Additionally FAT32 is usually quirky at 32GB+ and certainly unwise to use for 64GB+ ... that's NTFS' strong point (as well as security, compression etc). FAT32 gets poor if you go just over the boundary for the next cluster size too, a 33GB partn can easily hold less datat than a 32GB partn when you use FAT32. IIRC FAT16 used 32K cluster size for 2GB and 16KB for 1GB ... yuk!