exFAT or NTFS???

Which is better or should i say which is better for what? For an example which would be better for your OS drive and which would be better for games or storage. I read the wiki on it but I really don't see where the practical application and the pros/cons for these.

 

so performance wise there is no diofference? minus the fact that fat32 had 4GB file limits and exFAT is like 2TB i think and NTFS is close to that

 

It's mostly about device compatibility. Here's what's going on:

FAT32 has the best device and OS support of any of them, because it is simple and relatively easy to implement support for. It is a simple file system without many advanced features like user and group permissions. It has some limitations, particularly the 4 gb file size limit.

NTFS was designed to replace FAT. It's much more sophisticated and allows for user and group file permissions, and other fancy stuff FAT32 doesn't have. It may be marginally slower due to supporting all the extra features, but this may not be too noticeable.

exFAT is like FAT32 without the limitations. However, it's pretty new, and requires a license from Microsoft, so it's not all that widely supported at the moment.

So basically, for internal drives and partitions (and for external drives used only with your computer, such as backup drives) I recommend NTFS. For other external drives, I recommend FAT32 if you don't need to store large (>4gb) files. (Usually the only files this big are large video files such as full-length movies.) If you do, then I'd suggest NTFS, unless you have a device that supports exFAT but not NTFS.

Oh yeah, that's true, in some cases NTFS can perform better, depending on file structure... I forget all the details.

 

Alright thx guys plus rep for you....so basicly everything i thought is true. one thing i read though was kinda interestign was the altancy of the filee systems...i think exFAT was the slowest and NTFS was the fastest...i cant remember though.

 

On your OS drive? Well, yeah, I guess if you don't mind any user, or any program, to willy-nilly read, write over, or delete any of your system files, in other words, if you have no interest at all in any kind of security, then exFAT might make a fine choice.

Seriously, though, no modern OS can be installed it on that kind of a file system. Certainly you cannot install Windows Vista and above on an exFAT-formatted disk.