[Thinkpad] T43

[STeve Andre']

On Monday 09 October 2006 16:31, Michael Geary wrote:
> > Without getting into an OT war on this, there are certainly
> > some valid reasons to prefer Fat32 on a partition instead of
> > NTFS.  I had a series of system crashes with NTFS systems a
> > couple of years ago (on 2 different machines), and system
> > attempts to automatically repair the directory structure
> > munged everything so badly that none of my recovery utilities
> > could do anything.  I now keep the main Windows partition
> > small and FAT32, and the remainder of the system NTFS - this
> > gives me the security and random-access-speed advantages of
> > NTFS, and the simplicity of FAT32 for basic system stuff (as
> > well as a platform for multi-booting into DOS to run some
> > very old software I need that will not run in a DOS window).
>
> Using FAT32 does allow you to use recovery utilities that do not understand
> NTFS.
>
> BUT... It makes it *MUCH* more likely that you will need to use those
> recovery utilities. NTFS is in a completely different league than FAT32
> when it comes to robustness.
>
> Not a tradeoff I'd be willing to make, but YMMV.
>
> For running that old DOS software, VMware is the best solution. You can
> create a DOS VM that lets you actually run DOS in its own virtual machine.
> No rebooting required. You can use the free VMware player - let me know if
> you'd like a blank VM image ready to install DOS in.
>
> -Mike

You know, I keep hearing that: NTFS is more robust than FAT32, and while
its architecture might be better, in the 10 years at my current job with
about 100 Windows machines at any given point in my life, I've yet to see
a disk screwup that was filesystem related.  Sure, disks have blown, and
that has twice caused me grief as I pried files away from the mangled
mess of the disk, but that was due to the disk dying.

One big reason to use FAT32: you can stare at the disk when something
causes Windows to choke on boot up, if you have a Win98 boot disk
lying around.  I once had a user who desperately needed to see some
files on his laptop which stopped booting correctly.  I was able to help
him after he found a win98 disk.  I know there are tools now to get you
look at an NTFS disk, but in an emergency, most people do not have
access to them.

Is that a valid reason to stick with FAT32?  Probably not, for most people.
But it is something to think about.

--STeve Andre'