Difference Between FAT and NTFS File Systems
Comparison between NTFS and FAT
Fat 16 was developed in 1981 for dos
Fat 16 was designed to handle floppies
Fat 32 is an extension of Fat 16
Fat 32 introduced in service pack 2 of Windows 95
Operating systems may recognise Fat16, but not Fat 32 (Win NT)
You can go from FAT to NTFS but not the other way around
FAT = File Allocation Table
NTFS = New Technology File System
Difference Between FAT and NTFS File Systems
| NTFS | FAT |
|---|---|
| Default File system In Windows XP, 2k and NT | Fat 16 not compatible with XP, FAT is more |
| Support For Drives over 40gb, Files over GB | compatible with other operating Systems(Windows 95, etc) |
| Allows extended file names, foreign characters | FAT 16 has 8.3 character limitation |
| Has a severely crippled maintenance system in chkdsk Chkdsk is notoriously slow | Has better, more and interactive recovery utilities (scandisk) Scandisk is very quick Just a space for the OS to read files |
| Increased security with file encryption Smaller file clusters, 4kb | Faster on drives less than 10gb FAT 16 cluster size is 32kb |
| Compression to reduce disk space | No |
| User permissions for files and folders | No |
| File copies are “undone” if interrupted, cluster chains is cleaned Small files are kept in Master File Table at the beginning of the drive Not compatible with different operating systems on the same computer | Cluster chains containing data from interrupted copies are marked as damaged Master File Table are separate from files |