NTFS vs. Fat32

G9

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Well, why use Fat32? I already know that it is inferior in many (all?) ways than the NTFS format... but I'm planning to get a Mac soon, so I'll need to use the Fat32 format. So basically, I'll use Boot Camp to make two partitions, one for Mac, and one for XP... and then get another partitioning program to make a Fat32 partition for my personal files that I want to be accessible to both OS's. Now I want to know how much worse Fat32 is in comparison to NTFS. Please include issues of speed, stability, and security in your posts. Thank you.
 
Fat32 has a limit on size, it is a lot smaller than NTFS. Thats the only difference i believe, or that i know of.
 
Wait... I don't get it. So formatting an Fat32... oh, I see. It's like I have an NTFS-formatted 400GB harddrive, but it only shows 372. So the gap will be even bigger with fat32?
 
it might, im not 100% sure though. For the 400GB drive, it is because Windows and the hard drive manufacturers use a different definition as 1 byte. One uses base 2, another uses base 10. Thats why it shows up differently.
 
So all in all, Fat32 is really inferior. I guess I'll format the XP partition as Fat32 and get MacDrive so I can read Mac files via windows.
 
man the absolute main difference appart from size is security

permissions etc etc for files can only be done one NTFS, fat32 is crap on that aspect!!
 
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