Notebooks preformated in FAT32

[jlreich]

I have been looking at notebooks lately and have noticed that a lot of them are coming formated in FAT32, with XP pro or home. Can anyone elaborate as to why? :confused:

[deddard]

At a guess I'd say that some of the apps they may supply don't like NTFS, or it is just easier for them to check things with utilities and make adjustments on non-ntfs disks.

[Steve]

That's a pretty good question. HDD size comes to mind. ??

[jlreich]

Thanks for your replies.

I was thinking size, but 60, 80, and even 100GB HDD's are common in notebooks these days. I wouldn't get anything less than a 40GB. Seems like the sweet spot would be 60 or 80GB for notebooks.

Also thinking that maybe with the usually slower speeds of notebook HDD's, FAT32 was somehow more efficient? But I don't know enough about file systems to say one way or the other. :confused:

It bugs me though. If I end getting one in the next couple of months, I will be very tempted to just wipe it and reinstall. Or I suppose I could just go for a conversion to NTFS.

[saphalline]

Not just notebooks, but many OEM systems come with FAT32 by default. A lot of this has to do with implied compatibility with older systems, using older versions of Windows or perhaps even Linux. That's the only thing I can think of.

Other than that, it doesn't make much sense. If you can use NTFS, do it! NTFS is a lot better than FAT32 for many reasons. Do a forums search for more info, as it has been said a lot better than I can do right now. There's really no reason to go with FAT32 now that all versions of Windows use NTFS.

Converting to NTFS is easy. It takes about 5-15 minutes usually. Just go into Drive Management and convert! It's built into WinXP as a sort of wizard, and it does a perfectly adequate job. Obviously you have more options when you do a fresh partition (like cluster size and partition size) but even a standard FAT32-to-NTFS conversion will be a lot better than the alternative. ;)

[Paul Komski]

I agree - go with NTFS every time. The only real exception is when multibooting on a PC using Operating Systems such as DOS or Win9X which cannot see NTFS or Linux Distros that may not be able to write to (or write safely to) NTFS. Note that having NTFS doesnt prevent other PCs accessing the partitions via a network - just in accessing them from other incompatible operating systems installed on your pc, whether using hard drives, floppies or cdroms.

[jlreich]

Ahh, now that makes some sense. Compatibility with older systems in a business network. Many businesses still have clients with older OS's and many more that have Unix and Linux. At least I have some reason why. But still I think it is ridiculous. I know that NTFS has better security and a smaller cluster size so you have less slack space. I just thought maybe there was something I was missing as to why use FAT32.

It is something that just bugged me more than anything. I just couldn't figure out why. I will most likely wipe and reinstall anyway. If for nothing else other than who wants all that OEM junk that's preinstalled on their machine. ;) Also it will be easy to set up a small FAT32 partition for when I will use Linux. I long for the day when it is reasonable to build your own notebook. ;)

Thanks for the replies everyone.