Tuesday, October 19, 2010

NTFS drives

Windows NT Server introduced a new type of formatting for hard drives, different from the standard FAT system used by MS-DOS since the early 1980s. (FAT stands for File Allocation Table, in case you’re interested.) The new system, called NTFS (for NT File System) offers many advantages over FAT drives:

  1. NTFS is much more efficient at using the space on your hard drive. As a result, NTFS can cram more data onto a given hard drive than FAT.
  2. NTFS drives provide better security features than FAT drives. NTFS stores security information on disk for each file and directory. In contrast, FAT has only rudimentary security features.
  3. NTFS drives are more reliable because NTFS keeps duplicate copies of important information, such as the location of each file on the hard drive. If a problem develops on an NTFS drive, Windows NT Server can probably correct the problem without losing any data. In contrast, FAT drives are prone to losing information

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