With the exception of ToeJam there are a lot of misinformed folks in this thread...and giving advice out too!
I'm not going to spend too much time on this because I get kinda sick of explaining it but here's a few gems for ya...
Yes, 32K cluster size waste's more space than 4K cluster sizes. At current hard drive prices don't lose any sleep over this.
On an empty disk, FAT is faster. In just about any other situation NTFS is faster. FAT puts it's allocation tables near the edge of the disk. As you fill the disk and move towards the center the head must spend more time going back and forth from the center to the edge to write data and then update the FAT tables. NTFS holds it's "FAT" tables (note the quotes) about halfway from edge to center.
You won't take a performance hit in NTFS from accessing the ACL's (Access control lists...holds file permissions).
NTFS is almost immune to errors cause by crashes and improper shutdowns. It logs when a transaction has started and then again when it completes. If your computer boots and a transaction shows as started but not finished, the crap data is discarded and you get a chkdsk run. FAT will piss all over itself if the same thing happens.
You can go well beyond 32mb with a FAT disk in w2k and xp...you just can't FORMAT one that big. If you want a 80gig FAT drive you'll have to use DOS Fdisk and Format to get the job done. FAT start's getting [-peep-] efficiency as the drive gets bigger so why you would do this is beyond me.
Now for the short answer:
If you want compatibility with another dual boot operating system like Windows 98 (eww...puke) then use FAT. For ANY other reason use NTFS. Don't try using the excuse that you can't access your files in an emergency either. You CAN get to a command prompt in NTFS.
I'm not going to spend too much time on this because I get kinda sick of explaining it but here's a few gems for ya...
Yes, 32K cluster size waste's more space than 4K cluster sizes. At current hard drive prices don't lose any sleep over this.
On an empty disk, FAT is faster. In just about any other situation NTFS is faster. FAT puts it's allocation tables near the edge of the disk. As you fill the disk and move towards the center the head must spend more time going back and forth from the center to the edge to write data and then update the FAT tables. NTFS holds it's "FAT" tables (note the quotes) about halfway from edge to center.
You won't take a performance hit in NTFS from accessing the ACL's (Access control lists...holds file permissions).
NTFS is almost immune to errors cause by crashes and improper shutdowns. It logs when a transaction has started and then again when it completes. If your computer boots and a transaction shows as started but not finished, the crap data is discarded and you get a chkdsk run. FAT will piss all over itself if the same thing happens.
You can go well beyond 32mb with a FAT disk in w2k and xp...you just can't FORMAT one that big. If you want a 80gig FAT drive you'll have to use DOS Fdisk and Format to get the job done. FAT start's getting [-peep-] efficiency as the drive gets bigger so why you would do this is beyond me.
Now for the short answer:
If you want compatibility with another dual boot operating system like Windows 98 (eww...puke) then use FAT. For ANY other reason use NTFS. Don't try using the excuse that you can't access your files in an emergency either. You CAN get to a command prompt in NTFS.