Acer Aspire AS5672 - FAT32 vs NTFS?

I am planning on buying a Acer 5672. While researching, I noticed people complaining about it having FAT32 and not NTFS. Pros? Cons? Should I change it to NTFS? If so, what is the best way?

 

I don't think anyone can understand why Acer still format hard drives in FAT32, rather than NTFS which has been the default standard since WinXP debuted.
That being said, you want reasons - some are detailed here:
http://www.ntfs.com/ntfs_vs_fat.htm
So limitations include partition size, file size, and file security.
To change to NTFS, use the instructions supplied by Microsoft themselves @ http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/winxppro/maintain/convertfat.mspx
and backup your data first, even though this is anon-destructive process. I have never seen anyone lose data this way, but you don't want to be the first!

 

To add to any confusion you might have you might also like to read this:

http://cquirke.mvps.org/ntfs.htm

I'm happy with my AS5672 formatted(fat32) as from the factory. I'm also glad that Acer was smart enough to provide the 120gb disk with a Data partition.

For large files such as video, I use an external firewire/usb hard drive formatted in NTFS.

 

From personal experience here, and avoiding all the fancy tech talk, I found that FAT32 takes an age to defragment. NTFS a hell of a lot quicker. I converted my hard drive over to NTFS the other day out of interest since Diskeeper used to run a lot faster on my desktop machine, and sure enough converting over absolutely slashed defrag times.