NTFS revisited.(New Technology File System )(Brief article)

Byline: Tim Nott

NTFS revisited

Make the most of your hard drive with NTFS

We've dealt with the pros and cons of the NTFS file system compared with Fat32 in the past: to recap, NTFS wins all round. It can deal with larger disks, larger files and is more robust.

Although it has been around since 1993, it was only implemented in Windows NT and 2000: users of 95, 98 and ME were stuck with Fat and Fat32. Windows XP reunited the 'pros' with the 'consumers', with NTFS as an option in both Pro and Home versions.

Apart from supporting bigger disks (256TB) and bigger files (16TB), NTFS offers metadata and journalling. The first lets you see more information about your files; for example, the shutter speed and aperture setting of a digital photo. The second keeps a record of changes to the file system before the changes are made. So if, for instance, there's a power failure in the middle of a disk write, it becomes much easier for the operating system to sort this out on rebooting. For the user, this means the reprimand and detention following an 'improper shutdown' in Windows ME and 98 are things of the past.

NTFS brings with it three extras: compression, quotas and encryption. The first lets you save disk space by compressing files and folders. System-wide file compression is nothing new: MS-Dos 6.2 came with Drivespace, and this was pre-dated by Stac Electronics Stacker in 1991. Unlike those utilities, however, NTFS compression can be used with individual files and folders as well as a drive. Although the techniques are similar, this is not the same as creating compressed (Zip) folders.