My personal preference would be to do an FFR (Fdisk Format Reinstall) and
install NTFS.  XP will handle both file systems, but NTFS will allow you to
add security to individual folders and files natively.  You can certainly
password protect files and folders using FAT16 or FAT32, but you need a
third party program to do it.  Plus, you have to manually authenticate to
them, where NTFS will use the credentials you are currently logged in with
to decide if you should have access.

You can also natively compress individual files or folders with NTFS without
having to use disk compression to compress the entire drive.  There are
probably those who will refute this, but it is my belief that compressing
files in NTFS will have little or no impact on the access or use of those
files.  One of my favorite video games is Unreal Tournament.  This is a
video game that will use all of the resources you can throw at it - video,
CPU, memory, and hard drive.  To test the effect of compressed files on an
application I compressed the entire directory that I had UT installed on and
started playing the game.  This was over 1.5GB of data.  In running
performance tests, both with and without compression, there was no
difference between the two.

The mentioned test was run using Windows 2000 Professional.  XP is basically
Win2k Pro in different clothes.  They changed some of the functionality,
visuals, and bells & whistles,  but it is essentially the same operating
system, so the test should be valid with both.  One option is to convert the
drive to NTFS without formatting it.  You did this in Win2k with the
"convert" command from a command prompt.  You cannot convert the drive you
are currently on.  I have actually done this once (again to test), but as I
stated before, my preference would be to FFR.  I like the idea of starting
with a clean drive.

Hope this helps!

Kyle Elmblade
Distinct Computer Solutions
[log in to unmask]
Computers are a more fun way to do the same work you'd have to do without
them.

From: "Tom Landon" <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, April 01, 2003 5:10 PM
Subject: [PCBUILD] XP setup question


> H'lo all.
>
> I'm about to take the plunge into Win XP Pro. I've got 2 physical hard
> drives. Drive 0 (30GB WD) is for system and progs, and drive 1 (40GB WD)
> is for data, images, music, etc. The XP advisor indicated possible
> problems with the SCSI card (Adaptec AIC-7850 PCI), but I'm not worried
> about that. If need be I'll upgrade the card. There was also indication
> of some software that may not work. Not worried about that either.
>
> My question has to do with drive 1, the data drive. I will back up the 15
> gigs to CD. Should I fdisk/format that drive to NTFS, or will XP handle
> drives with 2 different file systems?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Tom Landon

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