NTFS Performance
NTFS under XP is jackin' my system up!!!!!!!!! File access is incredibly slow. Programs take forever to start up. The harddisk is banging around constantly. FAT32 seemed much much faster. Also 3d framerates have suffered.
NTFS under XP is jackin' my system up!!!!!!!!! File access is incredibly slow. Programs take forever to start up. The harddisk is banging around constantly. FAT32 seemed much much faster. Also 3d framerates have suffered. Is NTFS better or just hype. It may be more secure but its definitly slower.
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Wow, I guess I should have checked back a while ago, but this comparison (FAT/FAT32/NTFS) normally comes up about once every 6 months or so (we have been overdue for a while), so I'll break out one of my fav links on the subject:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/treevie...rt3/proch17.asp
Now, here's a nice quote on it:
Quote:Performance For small volumes, FAT16 or FAT32 might provide nominally faster access to files than NTFS because:
The FAT structure is simpler.
The FAT folder size is smaller for an equal number of files.
FAT has no controls regulating whether a user can access a file or a folder; therefore, the system does not have to check that a user has access permissions to a file or folder. This advantage is minimal, however, because Windows 2000 still must determine whether the file is read-only, or whether the file is on a FAT or NTFS volume.
If this doesn't help, I think I have some more links buried somewhere to help illustrate the performance a bit more, but essentially what you are looking at is a great big virtual tile floor. Now, since the tile floor (the partition) is of a fixed size, the smaller the tile you use will gain you more open spots for more tiles right? Well, on larger partitions (let's say >8GB, since that's average) FAT32 will have a much larger "cluster" (tile) size than NTFS (and less security overhead, however the MFT performance offsets most of the innate overhead anyway) on the same drive. Now, with the OS running across many more tiles to get the same job done, you very well might see a performance drop, a slight one, but one nevertheless. Now, I have not seen a performance drop, and alone with that I haven't seen any stupid chkdsk checks either at boot because of some annoying error that NTFS can't recover from (whereas I have seen that on the few FAT32 boxes I still have here that haven't been converted yet).
HTH
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/treevie...rt3/proch17.asp
Now, here's a nice quote on it:
Quote:Performance For small volumes, FAT16 or FAT32 might provide nominally faster access to files than NTFS because:
The FAT structure is simpler.
The FAT folder size is smaller for an equal number of files.
FAT has no controls regulating whether a user can access a file or a folder; therefore, the system does not have to check that a user has access permissions to a file or folder. This advantage is minimal, however, because Windows 2000 still must determine whether the file is read-only, or whether the file is on a FAT or NTFS volume.
If this doesn't help, I think I have some more links buried somewhere to help illustrate the performance a bit more, but essentially what you are looking at is a great big virtual tile floor. Now, since the tile floor (the partition) is of a fixed size, the smaller the tile you use will gain you more open spots for more tiles right? Well, on larger partitions (let's say >8GB, since that's average) FAT32 will have a much larger "cluster" (tile) size than NTFS (and less security overhead, however the MFT performance offsets most of the innate overhead anyway) on the same drive. Now, with the OS running across many more tiles to get the same job done, you very well might see a performance drop, a slight one, but one nevertheless. Now, I have not seen a performance drop, and alone with that I haven't seen any stupid chkdsk checks either at boot because of some annoying error that NTFS can't recover from (whereas I have seen that on the few FAT32 boxes I still have here that haven't been converted yet).
HTH
If you honestly ever suspect having a "hard disk meltdown", wouldn't you rather rely on a complete backup to CD or tape, anyway, to restore everything? I mean, you can do that in either FAT32 or NTFS.
I can't see that, just because you formatted to NTFS, rather than FAT32, you're going to prevent a faulty hard disk from completely screwing up. Okay, for lesser problems, where it's not actually the HD that's at fault but, more, some aspect of the OS, I could perhaps believe that NTFS will recover the situation better. But, as I said earlier, I've been running Win2K on FAT32 to date and, on the very infrequent occasions when something HAS gone wrong, Windows has always recovered.
Please, please. Someone, convince me that I'm not going to suffer a hikedown in speed if I go to NTFS.With obvious overheads, it certainly looks as though I am.
(Incidentally, I notice that, under Win2K's Disk management, you can format in either FAT32 or NTFS, and cluster size anything from 512b to 8KB, but I think that, in practice, Windows prefers to use the default setting and adjusts things itself, according to the size of the partition).
I can't see that, just because you formatted to NTFS, rather than FAT32, you're going to prevent a faulty hard disk from completely screwing up. Okay, for lesser problems, where it's not actually the HD that's at fault but, more, some aspect of the OS, I could perhaps believe that NTFS will recover the situation better. But, as I said earlier, I've been running Win2K on FAT32 to date and, on the very infrequent occasions when something HAS gone wrong, Windows has always recovered.
Please, please. Someone, convince me that I'm not going to suffer a hikedown in speed if I go to NTFS.With obvious overheads, it certainly looks as though I am.
(Incidentally, I notice that, under Win2K's Disk management, you can format in either FAT32 or NTFS, and cluster size anything from 512b to 8KB, but I think that, in practice, Windows prefers to use the default setting and adjusts things itself, according to the size of the partition).
Quote:
Clutch,
What do you suppose a "small" partition is? 2GB? 10GB? 30GB? Mine are around 15GB each, so which is going to run faster on them, NTFS or FAT32 - and why, precisely? Let's not have waffle.
OK, I think MS classifies partitions below 1 or 2GB to be "small" when using NTFS 5. As for me, I consider anything below 10GB to be small but I generally use one partition per drive whenever possible as I hate having the extra drive letters (I map network drives too), and I know that I will be deleting the partition anyway when I reinstall (I keep my stuff on servers at home and work, and if it's of long term worth I burn it to CD) my OS.
So, you want faster performance? Check out the table that's on the link I posted. You will notice that at 15GB you will have 8KB clusters vs. 4KB clusters in NTFS (default formatting). Well, you could format it to 8KB, or 16KB if you like, and then have bigger tiles (and therefore less of them) to work with. However, if you go over 8KB in Win2K, the only defrag software that will work with it is Speeddisk from Norton since they wrote their own API. With some tweaking, I would imagine you could get NTFS to run even faster than FAT32 while retaining the higher security and integrity attributes that it's known for. I have a P3 550 at home running Win2K Server with a WD 120GB drive formatted into a single partition with 8KB clusters and it screams. But then again, this size wouldn't even have been supported with FAT32, and having 4 partitions for that would have sucked (plus zero security).
Clutch,
What do you suppose a "small" partition is? 2GB? 10GB? 30GB? Mine are around 15GB each, so which is going to run faster on them, NTFS or FAT32 - and why, precisely? Let's not have waffle.
OK, I think MS classifies partitions below 1 or 2GB to be "small" when using NTFS 5. As for me, I consider anything below 10GB to be small but I generally use one partition per drive whenever possible as I hate having the extra drive letters (I map network drives too), and I know that I will be deleting the partition anyway when I reinstall (I keep my stuff on servers at home and work, and if it's of long term worth I burn it to CD) my OS.
So, you want faster performance? Check out the table that's on the link I posted. You will notice that at 15GB you will have 8KB clusters vs. 4KB clusters in NTFS (default formatting). Well, you could format it to 8KB, or 16KB if you like, and then have bigger tiles (and therefore less of them) to work with. However, if you go over 8KB in Win2K, the only defrag software that will work with it is Speeddisk from Norton since they wrote their own API. With some tweaking, I would imagine you could get NTFS to run even faster than FAT32 while retaining the higher security and integrity attributes that it's known for. I have a P3 550 at home running Win2K Server with a WD 120GB drive formatted into a single partition with 8KB clusters and it screams. But then again, this size wouldn't even have been supported with FAT32, and having 4 partitions for that would have sucked (plus zero security).
Quote:
Takes time to backup & restore, but you're right... good practice to perform anyhow! I use NTFS to help avoid having to do that!
Yeah well, I didn't expect the operation (deleting one partition and resizing another over it) to **** up quite the way it did. (I've done it many a time with no ill effects) At least I was able to get out of it, had my disks been formatted as FAT32 I wouldn't have been anywhere near as confident in getting my data back.
Takes time to backup & restore, but you're right... good practice to perform anyhow! I use NTFS to help avoid having to do that!
Yeah well, I didn't expect the operation (deleting one partition and resizing another over it) to **** up quite the way it did. (I've done it many a time with no ill effects) At least I was able to get out of it, had my disks been formatted as FAT32 I wouldn't have been anywhere near as confident in getting my data back.
Thanks Clutch, for that link. It looks as though there's lots of useful information there. I've printed out all of Chapter 17; it'll make some happy bedtime reading!Hmmm.
Be warned, other readers of these postings! To print all or part of Chapter 17 (which is a very full Micro$oft description of all the file systems), you need to rt-click on the first page and select Print. Printing from the Toolbar doesn't work. Do be aware that Chapter 17 comprises 41 pages of A4 (less, I'd guess, with American-sizing).
Be warned, other readers of these postings! To print all or part of Chapter 17 (which is a very full Micro$oft description of all the file systems), you need to rt-click on the first page and select Print. Printing from the Toolbar doesn't work. Do be aware that Chapter 17 comprises 41 pages of A4 (less, I'd guess, with American-sizing).
Quote:
However, if you go over 8KB in Win2K, the only defrag software that will work with it is Speeddisk from Norton since they wrote their own API.I thought it was only 9x/ME that they used their own API for, & that that was the reason why the 2K/XP v. [which, IIRC, uses the MS API] of Speed Disk has less functionality?
However, if you go over 8KB in Win2K, the only defrag software that will work with it is Speeddisk from Norton since they wrote their own API.I thought it was only 9x/ME that they used their own API for, & that that was the reason why the 2K/XP v. [which, IIRC, uses the MS API] of Speed Disk has less functionality?
Quote:
I thought it was only 9x/ME that they used their own API for, & that that was the reason why the 2K/XP v. [which, IIRC, uses the MS API] of Speed Disk has less functionality?
It would appear not, as Speeddisk can defrag (from what I have read) clusters over 4KB in Windows 2000. All the other guys are stuck at 4KB and below, as that is what the MS API was written for at the time. WinXP and .NET don't have these issues though provided you have an updated version of your defrag utility. Ghayes is the man around here on this topic, so if I have some of this mixed a bit, then I hope he corrects it, but so far this description has panned out for me on my systems.
EDIT
After scanning back a bit on this thread, it appears that SpeedDisk uses the MS API only in WinXP, and not in NT or 2K, and hence the ability to get around the 4KB limit. In either case, they can do it on all 3 while the others cannot.
/EDIT
I thought it was only 9x/ME that they used their own API for, & that that was the reason why the 2K/XP v. [which, IIRC, uses the MS API] of Speed Disk has less functionality?
It would appear not, as Speeddisk can defrag (from what I have read) clusters over 4KB in Windows 2000. All the other guys are stuck at 4KB and below, as that is what the MS API was written for at the time. WinXP and .NET don't have these issues though provided you have an updated version of your defrag utility. Ghayes is the man around here on this topic, so if I have some of this mixed a bit, then I hope he corrects it, but so far this description has panned out for me on my systems.
EDIT
After scanning back a bit on this thread, it appears that SpeedDisk uses the MS API only in WinXP, and not in NT or 2K, and hence the ability to get around the 4KB limit. In either case, they can do it on all 3 while the others cannot.
/EDIT
All that discussion in one day only...
Gee, i am glad we are not face to face sometimes since we can't get anything done (workwise) apart from arguing.
Clutch already explained the reasons and all. All i am going to say/ ask is
When are people are going to believe in benchmarks??? Fat32 might be faster so what? How fast? 10%? 20%? we are talking about ms'nds here so even a hundred procent is not going to mean jack.
Security and reliability negates any real or imaginary advantage of Fat32. And if you are using computers as servers, mainframes etc instead of games you really don't have an alternative to NTFS in my opinion.
Gee, i am glad we are not face to face sometimes since we can't get anything done (workwise) apart from arguing.
Clutch already explained the reasons and all. All i am going to say/ ask is
When are people are going to believe in benchmarks??? Fat32 might be faster so what? How fast? 10%? 20%? we are talking about ms'nds here so even a hundred procent is not going to mean jack.
Security and reliability negates any real or imaginary advantage of Fat32. And if you are using computers as servers, mainframes etc instead of games you really don't have an alternative to NTFS in my opinion.
AlecStaar - have you actually used SD under 9x or ME? I ask because I'm not comparing SD to any other prog, I'm comparing SD to SD. Under 9x/ME it's a really good defragger, under 2K/XP there's precious little to raise it above the rest. If you have access to a 9x/ME machine try SD on there, take a look @ the extra options there are & what it can do, & then see how fast it is.
This isn't an NTFS vs. FAT32 issue, as I used FAT32 on 9x & still do on XP.
When you've seen SD under 9x/ME you'll realise that the 2K/XP v. has less features/abilities & is slower than the 9x/ME version
This isn't an NTFS vs. FAT32 issue, as I used FAT32 on 9x & still do on XP.
When you've seen SD under 9x/ME you'll realise that the 2K/XP v. has less features/abilities & is slower than the 9x/ME version
Backups are a MUST but they only go so far.
I have 50GB of data that I backup monthly or after I make alot of changes. This 50GB must be stored on my HD because I re-organize it constantly. If I used FAT32 I would have to use 2 partitions because FAT32 does not support parititions of that size. Now, a constant worry with me is corruption of files. You see...I do ALOT of messing around with my machine because I like to learn. I have not had time to build my second machine yet (gonna be my file-server) so currently these files are on my main machine. Now occasionally when overclocking and reaching the limits of the PCI bus errors are introduced into NTFS...I've lost a couple of files this way. (Now that I'm using an Athlon, instead of a P3 I no longer have to go to extremes in overclocking so I do not experience this anymore). With FAT32 I can guarandamteea that I would have lost it all....and I have.
My current backup solution is 2 100GB HD's. 1 HD for uncompressed files that I add to and reorganize. The second HD I backup to monthly (or after changes). The backup file is 50GB which cannot fit onto a FAT32 partition. FAT32 also cannot put security on my backup file...so let's say I'm connecting to my friend over the network and I'm using FAT32. Well if I didn't have a firewall he could just perform a simple \\xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx\I$ (if the share is not turned off) and delete all of my files. With NTFS I can keep my shares, assign security to them and also to my files.
Generally the higher the cluster size the greater the speed but also a greater waste of HD space. FAT32 has a higher cluster size than NTFS does by default. IIRC, FAT32 is 32kb and NTFS is 4kb. The speed decrease your noticing is probably because of that fact.
You can use FAT on your NT OS partition but anyone who does is putting themselves and everyone else at risk. I absolutely hate it when people make decisions and then only think these decisions affect themselves. We are all connected people. Your machine is not your machine when it's being used as a way station to attack on MY machine.
I really do not know why this thread was posted. If you cannot surf to microsoft.com/technet yourself and look up a couple of KB articles and decide which filesystem is better for you than perhaps you deserve what you will eventually get out of using an "inferior" filesystem. It's all right there in the KB.
Quote:If you honestly ever suspect having a "hard disk meltdown", wouldn't you rather rely on a complete backup to CD or tape, anyway, to restore everything? I mean, you can do that in either FAT32 or NTFS.
I can't see that, just because you formatted to NTFS, rather than FAT32, you're going to prevent a faulty hard disk from completely screwing up. Okay, for lesser problems, where it's not actually the HD that's at fault but, more, some aspect of the OS, I could perhaps believe that NTFS will recover the situation better. But, as I said earlier, I've been running Win2K on FAT32 to date and, on the very infrequent occasions when something HAS gone wrong, Windows has always recovered.
Please, please. Someone, convince me that I'm not going to suffer a hikedown in speed if I go to NTFS.With obvious overheads, it certainly looks as though I am.
(Incidentally, I notice that, under Win2K's Disk management, you can format in either FAT32 or NTFS, and cluster size anything from 512b to 8KB, but I think that, in practice, Windows prefers to use the default setting and adjusts things itself, according to the size of the partition).
I have 50GB of data that I backup monthly or after I make alot of changes. This 50GB must be stored on my HD because I re-organize it constantly. If I used FAT32 I would have to use 2 partitions because FAT32 does not support parititions of that size. Now, a constant worry with me is corruption of files. You see...I do ALOT of messing around with my machine because I like to learn. I have not had time to build my second machine yet (gonna be my file-server) so currently these files are on my main machine. Now occasionally when overclocking and reaching the limits of the PCI bus errors are introduced into NTFS...I've lost a couple of files this way. (Now that I'm using an Athlon, instead of a P3 I no longer have to go to extremes in overclocking so I do not experience this anymore). With FAT32 I can guarandamteea that I would have lost it all....and I have.
My current backup solution is 2 100GB HD's. 1 HD for uncompressed files that I add to and reorganize. The second HD I backup to monthly (or after changes). The backup file is 50GB which cannot fit onto a FAT32 partition. FAT32 also cannot put security on my backup file...so let's say I'm connecting to my friend over the network and I'm using FAT32. Well if I didn't have a firewall he could just perform a simple \\xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx\I$ (if the share is not turned off) and delete all of my files. With NTFS I can keep my shares, assign security to them and also to my files.
Generally the higher the cluster size the greater the speed but also a greater waste of HD space. FAT32 has a higher cluster size than NTFS does by default. IIRC, FAT32 is 32kb and NTFS is 4kb. The speed decrease your noticing is probably because of that fact.
You can use FAT on your NT OS partition but anyone who does is putting themselves and everyone else at risk. I absolutely hate it when people make decisions and then only think these decisions affect themselves. We are all connected people. Your machine is not your machine when it's being used as a way station to attack on MY machine.
I really do not know why this thread was posted. If you cannot surf to microsoft.com/technet yourself and look up a couple of KB articles and decide which filesystem is better for you than perhaps you deserve what you will eventually get out of using an "inferior" filesystem. It's all right there in the KB.
Quote:If you honestly ever suspect having a "hard disk meltdown", wouldn't you rather rely on a complete backup to CD or tape, anyway, to restore everything? I mean, you can do that in either FAT32 or NTFS.
I can't see that, just because you formatted to NTFS, rather than FAT32, you're going to prevent a faulty hard disk from completely screwing up. Okay, for lesser problems, where it's not actually the HD that's at fault but, more, some aspect of the OS, I could perhaps believe that NTFS will recover the situation better. But, as I said earlier, I've been running Win2K on FAT32 to date and, on the very infrequent occasions when something HAS gone wrong, Windows has always recovered.
Please, please. Someone, convince me that I'm not going to suffer a hikedown in speed if I go to NTFS.With obvious overheads, it certainly looks as though I am.
(Incidentally, I notice that, under Win2K's Disk management, you can format in either FAT32 or NTFS, and cluster size anything from 512b to 8KB, but I think that, in practice, Windows prefers to use the default setting and adjusts things itself, according to the size of the partition).
Other half??? You couldn't get me to go back to 9x for love nor money, I'm an XP "fanboy" too, but I used 9x for a long time.
As for Speed Disk, under XP it can't defrag the swap file. There are some defraggers out there that can do it with a reboot, but the 9x v. of SD used to do it whilst Windows was running. Also, haven't you noticed all those little yellow blobs on the Optimization Map scattered all over the place? Those are foiders - under 9x you could have them all sorted into 1 contiguous block, rather than here, there & everywhere. The option to do that in the XP v. seems to be missing. I think there were 1 or 2 other things as well, but I've forgotten as it's been so long since I switched to XP.
It was also noticeably faster under 9x.
As for Speed Disk, under XP it can't defrag the swap file. There are some defraggers out there that can do it with a reboot, but the 9x v. of SD used to do it whilst Windows was running. Also, haven't you noticed all those little yellow blobs on the Optimization Map scattered all over the place? Those are foiders - under 9x you could have them all sorted into 1 contiguous block, rather than here, there & everywhere. The option to do that in the XP v. seems to be missing. I think there were 1 or 2 other things as well, but I've forgotten as it's been so long since I switched to XP.
It was also noticeably faster under 9x.
