Reformatting soon; switch to NTFS or keep FAT32?

[GTwannabe 0]

The registry demons I had in 98SE have been popping up more and more frequently. I've decided to cut my losses, back up my data at work, and format the damn drive.

 

I have a 30 gig 7200rpm maxtor, which currently has only 1 FAT32 partition. I use my computer for games, burning software, and file whoring on the college network.

 

Could someone explain how the password protection of NTFS works? We use NetBeui on campus for Network Neighborhood access. I need my shared folders password protected (or they'll kick me off the network.) Would NTFS be of any benefit?

 

I've heard that NTFS causes problems when sharing files with non-NT systems. Is this true?

 

Thanks

[iGGy 0]

oh 'eck, this is a real can of worms.

 

Forget the networking issue for the moment, as a rule we've kept the Servers NTFS and Workstations FAT based. Many reasons for it, but recovering data (even though the important stuff is all on the servers) from nuked workstations is a good one.

 

Using permissions and shares with mixed OS's can prove troublesome if it's taken away from the user/server scenario. Many people can't manage to get their 98 PC's talking to NT workstations in a straight peer-to-peer network because of the inherent way NT handles security.

 

To set-up a quick file access method we've used a basic FTP server and assigned user/access rights to drives/files in the past. This removes the Windows based Share and Permission headaches when we've been trying to move data in a quick and dirty manner.

 

There's plenty of information floating around, NTFAQ for one has enough articles and How-to's that'll make you go running for a stiff drink.

[jaywallen 0]

My $.02. If your data means something to you, and you want to make the most of W2K (security-wise and reliability-wise), go with NTFS. It is not harder to recover data on an NTFS partition than on a FAT or FAT32 partition. You just use different techniques. And NTFS is much less susceptible to data corruption. The only thing is that I've never seen NetBEUI used with W2K or WinXP. W2K / NT is a LOT better at networking than Win98SE. People who have trouble connecting the two types just aren't following some rather basic steps. Learning to use these operating systems properly involves learning how to network with them and how to use their recovery procedures. Your system and your data will be safer if you go with NTFS and deal with the learning curve.

 

Regards,

Jim

[Toby 0]

Just a little tip of restoring data from a crashed workstation with NT/2000 OS. (NTFS)

 

Create a image of the drive/partition with Norton Ghost (over network to server), then use Ghost Explorer to extract the important files from the image.

 

The users I have to deal with just don't to save all there files on the server no matter how many times I tell them to..

 

Anyway this method is much simpler than using NTFSDOS and has given me some fine bottles of whiskey from desparate users as well

 

/Toby

[Brian Frank 0]

NTFS is only a problem if you're doing a dual boot, since to my knowledge, WinNT/2k/XP are the only OS's that can read NTFS without a program to do so. This will not and does not affect things accross a network.

And about NetBEUI, right here at home there are 5 computers all running Win2k with NetBEUI working just fine. MS had to take it out of XP, and therefore screw up everything.

[GTwannabe 0]

NTFS it is then.

[FadedTimes 0]

Microsoft recommends on drives/partitions larger than 20gig for NTFS, as they say it scales better than FAT32 as the drives gets larger. FAT32 might take a hit preformance wise, but I can't compare because I always use NTFS heh

[INFERNO2000 0]

NTFS

 

and it's not just NT, 2k, and XP that can read it

 

BeOS can too