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FAT32 vs. NTFS?


jbarr

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I have read (on this forum and elsewhere) that formatting a Flash drive like my Corsair GT 4GB as NTFS will improve performance. But I have also read (elsewhere) that because NTFS is a journaling filesystem, that it has more write overhead that can reduce the life of the Flash media faster than FAT32. I want to take advantage of the speed and reliability that NTFS provides, but I am concerned about it impacting the lifespan of the drive.

 

Any comments or suggestions?

 

Thanks!

 

-Jim

http://JimsTips.com

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Yes that is true, NTFS will cause more reads and writes to the drive, but I dont think it will be something that you notice. However our flash drives have a 10 Year warranty and if they ever fail no matter how you format them we will replace them or it. I would suggest trying it both ways and see which works best for you.
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  • 4 months later...
Yes that is true, NTFS will cause more reads and writes to the drive, but I dont think it will be something that you notice. However our flash drives have a 10 Year warranty and if they ever fail no matter how you format them we will replace them or it. I would suggest trying it both ways and see which works best for you.

 

Ram Guy,

 

What's the relative cost in wear and tear NTFS vs. FAT32? I understand "mileage may vary". Could you ballpark the difference in wear and tear?

 

Thank you,

Harry Jacobson

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I have read (on this forum and elsewhere) that formatting a Flash drive like my Corsair GT 4GB as NTFS will improve performance. But I have also read (elsewhere) that because NTFS is a journaling filesystem, that it has more write overhead that can reduce the life of the Flash media faster than FAT32. I want to take advantage of the speed and reliability that NTFS provides, but I am concerned about it impacting the lifespan of the drive.

 

Any comments or suggestions?

 

Thanks!

 

-Jim

http://JimsTips.com

 

Jim, I don't think that you'll see much difference when testing the W/R performance under NTFS vs FAT32. I've done that for 2 drives across 3 platforms and saw nothing I would call statistically significant (perhaps a small increase in Write speeds with FAT32, but nothing to influence your decision). More importantly, I worked with the same operations on the drives with each file system over a few days and saw no real world difference...so, unless you expect to run up against the 4GB file size limitation of FAT32, it probably doesn't make much difference wich one you use. (If your interested in my test results see "16GB Voyager Not Performing Well: in this forum)

 

Cheers...:D:

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