# FAT32 vs. NTFS - bootcamp



## MACSPECTRUM (Oct 31, 2002)

Since NTFS is M$ property I would assume that the XP partition on the intelmac will have to be FAT32

FAT32 is faster but doesn't have as robust a file system as does NTFS
I wonder if this will present any problems?

I recognize that Apple did this since M$ refused to release VPC for MacIntel


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## dona83 (Jun 26, 2005)

I don't think M$ outright refused they're just weighing their options at the moment.


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## gordguide (Jan 13, 2001)

You should probably read the FAQ for answers to this and more, but basically it goes like this:

OSX can mount and read NTFS (v10.3-something and higher)
OSX can mount, read, and write to FAT-32
You can use either when you install XP with BootCamp
BootCamp will only work when you have not partitioned your boot drive on your Mac (ie you have one single partition with your OSX installation on it, not multiple partitions on one drive)
You can boot OSX and run Disk Utility to reformat a NTFS volume to FAT-32, but must choose NTFS when you install Windows if you want to use that format with Windows; Disk Utility cannot create a NTFS volume (ie go the other way)
FAT-32 cannot create volumes larger than 32MB if you use BootCamp/XP to format the drive (this is a limitation of Windows XP's formatter)
BootCamp will not format an XP partition smaller than 5GB and will not allow you to create a partition that leaves the OSX partition with less than 5GB of free space.
BootCamp dynamically creates partition for XP (ie it doesn't erase your existing OSX partition, it shrinks it to make room for the XP partition)

Although they don't say so specifically, you should be able to create a NTFS partition larger than 32 MB during your BootCamp/XP installation, then boot OSX, reformat that partition to FAT-32 (OSX will happily create a FAT-32 partition greater than 32MB and Windows XP will happily use it if it exists) and re-install Windows XP. That would give you a large partition with read-write capability in OSX and Windows.

" ... I don't think M$ outright refused they're just weighing their options at the moment. ..."

"Refused" is reading between the lines, Microsoft has never actually said "never". (Then again, who does?). What they did say, publicly and officially, specifically when asked about VPC on MacTel, is they have no plans to introduce it, and they are committed to supporting and updating VPC for PPC Macintosh hardware only.


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## harrytse (Nov 3, 2005)

NTFS may be an Microsoft intellectual property. but it's Windows Installer that formats or converts the parititon to NTFS, not Mac OS X or boot camp. 

either way since the neutral file system between Mac OS X and Windows is FAT, a drive for sharing files between the boot environments for reading and writing purposes would have to be FAT, neither terribly secure or efficient, whether it be the Mac OS X partition, the Windows partition or a third drive, though people don't seem to have a problem doing that for sharing external drives between systems now anyways.


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## NBiBooker (Apr 3, 2004)

Remember that FAT32 is limited to 32 megs. NTFS does not have that limitation. If you want a swap drive so you can transfer files back and forth, consider creating a seperate FAT partition.


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## saxamaphone (May 18, 2004)

NBiBooker said:


> Remember that FAT32 is limited to 32 megs. NTFS does not have that limitation. If you want a swap drive so you can transfer files back and forth, consider creating a seperate FAT partition.


wuh? i have created many fat32 partitions much larger than 32Megs. This sounds like a mistake.


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## CanadaRAM (Jul 24, 2005)

FAQ 
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=303572

Installation Guide
http://images.apple.com/macosx/bootcamp/pdf/Boot_Camp_Beta_Setup_Guide.pdf


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## ncoffey (Apr 6, 2005)

FAT32 is restricted to 125GiB at the moment, with filesizes no larger than 4GiB. I would recommend going with FAT32 if you decide to install XP on your intel mac, because you can then read+write the xp disk while in OS X. (This is what I did this morning, with a 15 GiB partition)

Edit: Apple states the limit is 32GiB. Not sure why, as FAT32 should support more. I still recommend using FAT32 if you can, due to the ability to read+write that partition in OS X.


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## noelfiliusdei (Mar 21, 2008)

just to clear things up..
FAT is restricted to 32MB
FAT32 is able to do more  *looks at above post*


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## machspeed5 (Mar 4, 2008)

I first installed XP (under boot camp) using fat32, and sadly realized the 4GB file limit. So after my install got screwed by spyware anyway, i reformatted -- this time with NTFS, and sadly realized that NTFS isn't fully supported by Leopard (read only, not write).....ugh....so then i found & installed FUSE & NTFS-3G and now it works, though dead slow @ like 2MB/sec between drives, not to mention is increases your shutdown/reboot times by 10-15 seconds at least. A spinning cursor you'll notice during this operation. and this is on a penryn MBP tptptptp 

from wiki: 

"Since then, full support for NTFS has become available in Linux and many other operating systems, by installing the FUSE library (on Linux) together with the NTFS-3G application."


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## cap10subtext (Oct 13, 2005)

My suggestion is go NTFS if you want to back up your XP partition with winclone. I would then recommend using an external or a USB key formatted to FAT32 to transfer files back and forth. The only other suggestion I have is to use Macdrive to access you Mac drives in XP mode. If someone has a better solution I'm all ears.


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## kb244 (Apr 23, 2002)

I normally would just use FAT32, you can always use Norton Ghost or something like if creating a backup image is of importance to you. It just makes more sense to me cuz with FAT32 I can freely access my windows partition from the mac if I must (especially if I need to free some stuff off the OSX partition).


Far as XP seeing the OSX partition... no clue seeing as XP doesn't understand unix partitions and the likes.


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## noelfiliusdei (Mar 21, 2008)

oh no. adding windows over mac os x via boot camp already increased my boot time by about 5 seconds. no way. no thanks.

if you use your boot camp partition as a virtual machine via vmware you can transfer files without problems


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## dona83 (Jun 26, 2005)

Windows XP tends to be unstable with FAT32. When you start up your computer you'll often get that "Checking system for corrupt files" thing.


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## noelfiliusdei (Mar 21, 2008)

yeah. that too! actually that problem originated way back to the windows 98 days.

it's settled then! Boot Camp + VMWare @ NTFS  i really think it's current best way to do it.


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## guytoronto (Jun 25, 2005)

dona83 said:


> Windows XP tends to be unstable with FAT32. When you start up your computer you'll often get that "Checking system for corrupt files" thing.


FUD. I've installed XP on many machines with the drive formatted FAT32, and never had a problem.


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## screature (May 14, 2007)

noelfiliusdei said:


> just to clear things up..
> FAT is restricted to 32MB
> FAT32 is able to do more  *looks at above post*


This is true if you format the drive FAT32 from Windows, you can format a drive FAT 32 from OSX larger than 32GB and it can still be read and write within Windows. I know because I have done it.


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## kb244 (Apr 23, 2002)

guytoronto said:


> FUD. I've installed XP on many machines with the drive formatted FAT32, and never had a problem.


Ditto, a good many machines I have. NTFS is mainly useful for partitions greater than 64GB (better performance that way). But there are ways to increase boot time, such as cutting down the boot delay in the windows system setting. Course I can't remember what exactly I did I'm not really having a problem with boot time, and I know when I tried vista on the machine I was easily able to decrease the boot delay by writing to the MBR using this software (which significantly cut down on those "Unrecognized Partition Table for Drive 80. Please rebuild it using a Microsoft-compatible FDISK tool."

Software Library - NeoSmart Technologies

But its just my opinion that some of the things said here, is not much different than windows users saying stuff about OSX due to their unfamiliarity with the finer points of the OS.


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## kb244 (Apr 23, 2002)

machspeed5 said:


> I first installed XP (under boot camp) using fat32, and sadly realized the 4GB file limit. So after my install got screwed by spyware anyway, i reformatted -- this time with NTFS, and sadly realized that NTFS isn't fully supported by Leopard (read only, not write).....ugh....so then i found & installed FUSE & NTFS-3G and now it works, though dead slow @ like 2MB/sec between drives, not to mention is increases your shutdown/reboot times by 10-15 seconds at least. A spinning cursor you'll notice during this operation. and this is on a penryn MBP tptptptp
> 
> from wiki:
> 
> "Since then, full support for NTFS has become available in Linux and many other operating systems, by installing the FUSE library (on Linux) together with the NTFS-3G application."


There do seem to be some 3rd party drivers online for NTFS writing, but must of them seem to be for the general *nix OS (makes one wonder if the tech savvy can rework it for OSX). One of the other ones was PARAGON Software Group - partitioning, drive backup, hard disk maintenance (though its not free). 

I think there was something to do with NTFS partitions requiring authenication from the user that created the partition (usually the windows administration password) in order to allow for file changes.


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## EvanPitts (Mar 9, 2007)

noelfiliusdei said:


> just to clear things up..
> FAT is restricted to 32MB
> FAT32 is able to do more  *looks at above post*


Actually...

FAT12 is limited to 32MB, and is used on floppy disks (where the tables take up less space), and on hard disks running DOS versions prior to 3.3.

FAT16 is limited to 512MB, (Adopted in DOS 3.3, CompaqDOS 3.21) though this can easily be extended by formatting the drive for longer tracks (LBA mode), and many systems can actually format FAT16 up to 2GB, and less commonly, 4GB. (This is both a BIOS and controller limitation. DOS itself can actually handle 64kB blocks, though this leads to much wasted slack space on the drive).

By the same token, FAT32 has a limit of 32GB, though through the use of larger (non-standard) track lengths, this can be extended somewhat. The 128GB limit is not so much a limit of FAT32, but a limit imposed by 48 bit dive controllers; just like many older Macs have the same limitation. Longer track lengths also lead to much wasted slack space, and is acute in Windoze with the number of small files. (Mac OSX has less of a problem because of the use of a pointer based, rather than table based, allocation system.)

NTFS is a convoluted system which basically uses multiple File Allocations Tables. Originally FAT16 based, NTFS/HPFS placed a FAT at every 32MB boundary on the drive. This was converted to FAT32, which places a table every 32GB of the drive. Thus an NTFS drive on a 120GB drive will actually contain 4 interlinked file allocations tables. It is also less restricted because the Directory entries are much longer than their DOS predecessors, thus, files can "span" tables (breaking the limit of both 4GB pointer size and 32GB table size limitations), and with a much finer time stamp (in order to make the system operate better in a shared network environment).

NTFS systems are notoriously hard to write to. The Evil Empire has consistently not revealed the method on which they write to NTFS drives, but part of this is that they key players who originally wrote such code in Assembler have left, and it is so convoluted that really, no one can figure it out. There are some Beta drivers available to write to NTFS, including one I know that has been ported to OSX - but they have the habit of corrupting the drive. The same problems are revealed when trying to write to an HFS+ system from an alien OS.

Other "workarounds" tend to be much more effective,and hence, have been adopted because of the worthlessness and costly nature of attempted reverse engineering of systems that are superseeded by simple exchanges of data over networks, both local and wide area, as well as the looming prospect of such futuristic file systems as ZFS. Really, not many people want to remove a drive from a Vista box, put it in a Mac to swap some files; when they can just copy over a network, or through a keychain drive...


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## Cojcolds (Jan 22, 2010)

gordguide said:


> You can boot OSX and run Disk Utility to reformat a NTFS volume to FAT-32, but must choose NTFS when you install Windows if you want to use that format with Windows; Disk Utility cannot create a NTFS volume (ie go the other way)


This gave me hope that I could get a Fat32 partition larger that 32GB for booting WinXP off. However, my experience proved otherwise...

While yes you can successfully format a fat32 partition in OSX larger than 32GB (mine was 75GB) and yes you can successfully install WinXP onto it, you can't boot up off it. I kept receiving a black screen with "Disk error" when booting off the partition. I tried a few times with the same error.

I had to resort to NTFS to get a 75GB partition working with XP.

I wish/hope there is another way... 

Cheers,

Cojcolds


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## screature (May 14, 2007)

Cojcolds said:


> This gave me hope that I could get a Fat32 partition larger that 32GB for booting WinXP off. However, my experience proved otherwise...
> 
> While yes you can successfully format a fat32 partition in OSX larger than 32GB (mine was 75GB) and yes you can successfully install WinXP onto it, you can't boot up off it. I kept receiving a black screen with "Disk error" when booting off the partition. I tried a few times with the same error.
> 
> ...


Why do say *resort* to NTFS it is a superior format.


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## Newdeal (Nov 2, 2009)

*...*

just get paragon ntfs problem solved mac can now write to ntfs partitions ad format them with disk utility


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## thegoat54 (Nov 20, 2007)

*Whats the problem?*

I don't understand what you guys are all complaining about?

From within OSX, or Bootcamp (Windows) you can read (but not write to) the other partition (Including NTFS). But this isn't a problem BECAUSE . . . .

If you have a file on your windows partition you need to edit on your OSX side, open finder and then drag and drop it into OSX (like your desktop).

And it goes the other way too . . .

If you have a file in your OSX partition you need in windows, reboot into bootcamp. Double click "My Computer" and open up your OSX partition and drag and drop it onto that desktop. . . 

DONE!

The old bootcamp, couldn't do this. But ever since Snow Leopard, its been built in. No installing of 3rd party software. No USB sticks to transfer files, no fuss, no muss.

Don't use FAT 32. The 4GB file limit sucks. That means you can never mount or burn a DVD image. Also I used FAT 32 way back with Windows 95. Its ancient! UPGRADE people, UPGRADE!!


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## Cojcolds (Jan 22, 2010)

screature said:


> Why do say *resort* to NTFS it is a superior format.


I was referring to the loss of being able to read/write to the partition from the Mac side.



Newdeal said:


> just get paragon ntfs problem solved mac can now write to ntfs partitions ad format them with disk utility


Yes, I was getting to that stage, thanks!



thegoat54 said:


> ...snipped
> If you have a file on your windows partition you need to edit on your OSX side, open finder and then drag and drop it into OSX (like your desktop).


I'm working on a large project with 3.5GB worth of files. It would be a right-royal-pain to have to individually drag files out of the folder structure to edit them and then have to remember where I got them from when returning them after booting into the PC side. If it was just one or two files here or there - no problem.



thegoat54 said:


> ...snipped
> If you have a file in your OSX partition you need in windows, reboot into bootcamp. Double click "My Computer" and open up your OSX partition and drag and drop it onto that desktop. . .
> 
> DONE!
> ...


I've never seen the Mac drive show up on the windows side coz I'm using 10.5. So this is a new feature of Snow Leopard, eh?



thegoat54 said:


> Don't use FAT 32. The 4GB file limit sucks. That means you can never mount or burn a DVD image. Also I used FAT 32 way back with Windows 95. Its ancient! UPGRADE people, UPGRADE!!


Personally, I've not had any troubles burning DVD's but then again,. I may not have tried a maxed out disc either.

I'll explain the final result I achieved. As mentioned, I decided to go with a 75GB ntfs partition on the Mac. I restored my Ghost image to an external USB drive with a partition formatted to 32GB FAT32. I tried my hardest to find a utility which could safely copy the contents of the USB partition to the ntfs volume on the Mac but the utilities either wanted to clone the whole drive (which would have stuffed up my partitioning) or it couldn't work with GPT (GUID Parrtition Table) formatted drives. In a last ditch effort I decided to restore my ghost image directly onto the ntfs partition. I expected Ghost to either fail to report that it couldn't alter the partition size (because of the GPT formatting) or it would force it back to a 32GB FAT32 partition. After a successful restore, I booted off it without a problem but was surprised to see that the volume was indeed converted to FAT32 but was still 75GB.

In my short testings since the restore, the computer seems a little jumpy (small delays between activities) and the fan has been running a little high. I did a defrag and that seemed to help a little.

I'll probably still end up converting the partition to ntfs but I've also read online that the conversion process isn't all that reliable so I'm a little hesitant (due to the amount of time I've already lost).

So, many thanks for your kind words of advice!!!

Cheers,

Cojcolds


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