| The first thing you should decide
before preparing your drive, is which operating system
you are going to install and which file system you are
going to format the drive with.
Choosing an operating system is easy,
presumably you already have an operating system and
are upgrading, or want to start afresh with your existing
operating system.
Depending on your choice of operating
system, you have different FAT system (File Allocation
Table) options available. The table below illustrates
which FAT systems can be used with each version of the
Windows operating system.
| Operating System |
FAT16
|
FAT32
|
NTFS
|
| Windows 95 |
Y |
N |
N |
| Windows 95b,c (OSR
2.x) |
Y |
Y |
N |
| Windows 98 & 98
SE |
Y |
Y |
N |
| Windows ME |
Y |
Y |
N |
| Windows NT |
Y |
N |
Y |
| Windows 2000 |
Y |
Y |
Y |
| Windows XP |
Y |
Y |
Y |
You should also choose the file system
that is best for the size of the hard drive allocated
space (Volume) that you are installing.
The better the file system you use,
the more ability your system will have to address larger
volumes and improve disk usage, however the availability
of these file systems to specific Operating systems
should be considered when making a choice.
FAT16 - Volumes between 16Mb
and 2Gb
Available through MS-DOS, all versions of Windows, and
OS/2.
FAT32 - Volumes greater than 512Mb
up to 2Tb
Available only through Windows 95 OSR2, Windows 98,
Windows Me, Windows 2000 & Windows XP.
NTFS - Supports volumes greater than
2Tb up to almost infinite size!
Computers running Windows 2000 and Windows XP can access
files on a local NTFS partition. A computer running
Windows NT 4.0 with Service Pack 5 or later might be
able to access some files. Other operating systems allow
no local access.
Other advantages of NTFS :-
- Supports filenames up to 255 characters,
including many special characters and spaces.
- Increased Security
- Supports larger files
- DOS and Windows 9x systems can access
NTFS over a network
If you intend to create an NTFS partition
you must be using or installing Windows NT, Windows
2000 or Windows XP. If so then you can skip to the last
section of this article 'Preparing
an NTFS Volume' which explains how to prepare an
NTFS volume for use.
* Note: Different file systems have
no effect on files accessed across a network. Therefore
Windows 98 systems can access Windows XP or 2000 systems
with an NTFS file system.
|
Preparing a Hard Drive