File Systems

  Different File Systems

NTFS vs FAT

Criteria	NTFS5	NTFS	exFAT	FAT32
Operating System	Windows 2000 Windows XP Windows 2003 Server Windows 2008 Windows Vista Windows 7	Windows NT Windows 2000 Windows XP Windows 2003 Server Windows 2008Windows Vista Windows 7	Windows CE 6.0 Windows Vista SP1 Windows 7 WinXP+KB955704	DOS v7 and higher Windows 98 Windows ME Windows 2000 Windows XP Windows 2003 Server Windows Vista Windows 7
Max Volume Size	264 clusters minus 1 cluster	232 clusters minus 1 cluster	128PB	32GB for all OS. 2TB for some OS
Max Files on Volume	4,294,967,295 (232-1)	4,294,967,295 (232-1)	Nearly Unlimited	4194304
Max File Size	264 bytes (16 ExaBytes) minus 1KB	244 bytes (16 TeraBytes) minus 64KB	16EB	4GB minus 2 Bytes
Max Clusters Number	264 clusters minus 1 cluster	232 clusters minus 1 cluster	4294967295	4177918
Max File Name Length	Up to 255	Up to 255	Up to 255	Up to 255
Unicode File Names	Unicode  Character Set	Unicode  Character Set	Unicode  Character Set	System  Character Set
System Records Mirror	MFT Mirror File	MFT Mirror File	No	Second Copy of  FAT
Boot Sector Location	First and Last Sectors	First and Last Sectors	Sectors 0 to 11 Copy in 12 to 23	First Sector and Copy in Sector #6
File Attributes	Standard and Custom	Standard and Custom	Standard Set	Standard Set
Alternate Streams	Yes	Yes	No	No
Compression	Yes	Yes	No	No
Encryption	Yes	No	No	No
Object Permissions	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
Disk Quotas	Yes	No	No	No
Sparse Files	Yes	No	No	No
Reparse Points	Yes	No	No	No
Volume Mount Points	Yes	No	No	No
Built-In Security	Yes	Yes	Yes minimal ACL only	No
Recoverability	Yes	Yes	Yes if TFAT activated	No
Performance	Low on small volumes High on Large	Low on small volumes High on Large	High	High on small volumes Low on large
Disk Space Economy	Max	Max	Max	Average
Fault Tolerance	Max	Max	Yes if TFAT activated	Minimal