Formatting External Hard Drive

AllyBabe

I’ve just bought a Freecom External 500GB Hard Drive and when reading the reviews, I noticed some of them advised on formatting it to NTFS from FAT32. These means absolutely nothing to me! Just wondered if it was essential, the reason I would need to do it and is it pretty straightforward to do?

Thanks

Ally

MercilessKiller

Hm what advice told you to format it to NTFS? surely thats only if you need security attributes on your files

Little_John

If you plan useing it on an xbox 360 or anything else other than a PC leave it as fat32 the main disadvantage of fat32 is it can't store a single file over 3.99GB in size where NTFS can if you can live with that then leave it as fat32. and as MK says NTFS has additional security features that fat32 doesnt but the average home user naver makes use of them.

AllyBabe

When deciding which HD to go for, I noticed formatting to NTFS was mentioned several times by the reviewers, so just wanted to know if this was good advice, as I don’t have a clue! I don't want to go ahead and do it if I don't need to.

Thanks

AllyBabe

Thanks for that Little John, I didn't see your post when I replied! I think I'll leave it alone then as I'm mainly going to use it for backing up my zillions of photos and important docs initially.

oldagetraveller

AllyBabe - yes, it's very easy, if I can do it so can anyone! I reformatted a new Seagate 320Gb external drive to NTFS from FAT32 as supplied.
Have a read of this - http://www.informationweek.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=180207718
and/or this - http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.jsp?locale=en-US&name=Why_does_my_drive_report_as_full_even_when_it_is_not_(when_copying_files_larger_than_4_GB)&vgnextoid=92d1781e73d5d010VgnVCM100000dd04090aRCRD

If you do it be prepared for a bit of a wait, the process does take a few minutes, I thought I'd made a pigs ear of it at first!

Swindon_Baggie

Sometimes Windows Xp and Vista, will say that a FAT32 drive is not properly formatted as they both use NTFS, although they read both styles properly.

I was an avid FAT32 fan, until I stater storing ISO's and found I couldn't. I would recommend NTFS, some say its quicker.

ssjx

If you are likely to use the drive on computers other than your own, you are probably best off keeping it fat32. Compability is the only reason to leave it fat32 really.

With ntfs as well as security permissions, you get better reliability. Ntfs is more tolerent of faults and means less chance of loosing work due to drive problems. As mentioned, you also are not limited by file size which is useful if you do any video work.