NTFS or FAT for old external drive?

[Verve]

I just put together an external enclosure with an old 10 gig drive I got from a P3 computer... so, my question is, it's already in FAT32 -- should I format it to NTFS? Leave it?

 

[red onion]

NTFS is more reliable than FAT32, so should reformat it. I assume you have the space to mirror that big of a drive while doing the reformat

 

[The_Other_One]

I hear both ways, but I stick with NTFS most of the time. Realize FAT32 is limited to 4GB files(though I've had problems with 2GB files in the past).

And you don't have to format to convert to NTFS. I'd go ahead and format if possible, but it's not required...

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/winxppro/maintain/convertfat.mspx

 

[tlarkin]

FAT only has 1 single advantage over NTFS. Every other OS in the world can read/write FAT. Every other OS in the world can really only read NTFS, and if there is write support it is extremly shoddy.

Also, FAT is non meta data and non journaling, meaning on smaller volumes it is more stable. A 2gig thumb drive for example would be a good device to run FAT on.

For 10gigs I would say go NTFS if its only going to be used on current windows systems.