External HD - FAT32?

aguardiente3

aguardiente3

New Member
Hi.

I have a Seagate external hard drive (150 GB) and I've noticed that it's FAT32. Does that matter? :confused: Can I switch it to NTFS? And if so, what's the difference between NTFS and FAT32?

Any help is much appreciated. Thank you :)
 
NTFS replaced Microsoft's previous FAT file system, used in MS-DOS and early versions of Windows. NTFS has several improvements over FAT such as improved support for metadata and the use of advanced data structures to improve performance, reliability, and disk space utilization plus additional extensions such as security access control lists and file system journaling. The exact specification is a trade secret of Microsoft.
 
Go to run and type CMD, then type CONVERT X: /FS:NTFS

With X being your external drive letter. This will convert to NTFS if you'd like. I beleive many extneral drives come as FAT32 because of compatibility reasons. Macs only allow read access on NTFS, but can write FAT32.

All in all, NTFS is the better FAT, as mentioned. Particually if you plan to write large files to the dive(IE larger than 4GB)
 
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