file systems on vista

[jce223]

hi guys just a curiosity question. was checking the drives on my computer and found i have different file systems. is it ok to have different file systems on the computer at the same time? i have fat32 and ntfs didn't dig to see if they were on different hard drives or not

 

[richc46]

Well,
If you have more than one HD, each may be needed
If you have only one HD, and you have Vista, the Fat is not being used and is not causing harm.
You may also need it for a dual boot.

 

[jce223]

dug a bit deeper have 2 hard drives

1 western digital with 3 volumes on it
c which is ntfs
e (recovery) which is fat32 and has system restore on it
f(storage which is ntfs.

and a maxtor has 1 volume
d (backup) which is ntfs

so i guess if drive e is fat32 and system restore it must be ok.
that was my only concern

thanks for the response joe

 

[MilesAhead]

Even though you could use Fat32 for things other than a restore partition it's not the best idea. NTFS is a "journaling file system."

Here's an explanation:
http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/definition/journaling-file-system

Another link specific to NTFS:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ntfs


One of the things that really improved Linux when I was running it, was the introduction of ext3 file system. It's also a journaling file system. With a battery backup I very rarely ever had to run fsck(Linux equivalent of chkdsk to fix the file system) and if I did it was finished in about 2 seconds as all it did was get the journal in sync.

Fat32 is often used for USB key drives as it has less overhead. But with USB 3.0 even for key drives coming on, the justification for using it diminishes.