3.
Choosing a File System
Whether you're setting up a
new disk or reformatting
an existing one, the process of formatting entails choosing a file system. The
choices available to you depend on the type of media you are formatting.
With hard
disks, the only options made available by Disk Management are NTFS and
exFAT. If you want to format a hard disk in FAT or FAT32, you need to
use the command-prompt Format command, with the /FS switch. (Type format /? at the
command prompt for details.) The only good reason to do this, however,
is for the sake of compatibility with systems running Windows 9x. If you're dual-booting with Windows 9x and want the data
on the volume you're formatting to be accessible to the Windows 9x partition, you
should choose FAT32. Note that the 16-bit FAT, while still available, is
a relic of much older days when disks were dramatically smaller.
If you're formatting a USB flash drive, on the other hand, FAT32 is a
reasonable choice. In the first place, a flash drive is likely to serve
at times as a transfer medium, possibly with systems running earlier
versions of Windows. Secondly, because NTFS is a journaling file system,
reading and writing files on NTFS disks involves more disk input/output
than similar operations on FAT32 disks. Flash drives can perform a
finite number of reads and writes before they need to be replaced—hence,
they will likely have a longer life expectancy under FAT32 than under
NTFS.
3.1.
Choosing the Right UDF Version for Optical Media
If you're formatting
a writable CD or DVD disc, your choices are various flavors of the
Universal Disk Format (UDF). UDF, a successor to the CD-ROM file system
(CDFS), is an evolving specification. Windows 7 can format discs using
version 1.50, 2.00, 2.01, or 2.50. (Windows 7 can also use—but not
format—discs using the latest version, which is 2.60. Which to choose?
It depends on whether you want the CDs or DVDs that you generate to be
readable on systems running earlier versions of Windows or Windows
Server 2003. The differences are as follows:
Version 1.50 Can be
read on systems running Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista, and
Windows Server 2003.
Version 2.00 or 2.01
Cannot be read on Windows 2000. Can be read on Windows XP Service Pack
3, Windows Vista, and Windows Server 2003. Note that version 2.01 is a
minor revision of version 2.00. There is no reason to prefer version
2.00.
Version
2.50 Can be read only on computers
running Windows Vista, Windows 7, or Windows Server 2008 or later.
Note that all of
these variants are afforded read/write support by Windows 7, and that
none of them are supported in any form on Windows 9x platforms.
3.2.
Choosing Between UDF and Mastered Optical Media
You do not have to format a
CD or DVD (using one of the compatible UDF flavors) to store files on
it. You can burn files to optical media in the manner introduced by
Windows XP—by copying files to a temporary folder and transferring them en masse to the CD or
DVD. Using UDF is somewhat more convenient, because it allows you to
read and write CD or DVD files as though they were stored on a USB flash
drive or floppy disk. But the older method, sometimes called Mastered
or ISO,
offers greater compatibility with computers running other operating
systems, and it's the only method that allows you to burn audio files
and play them back on consumer audio devices.
Whatever choice you
make, you'll have to make the same choice the next time you decide you
want to transfer files to optical media. The default choice when you use
Windows Explorer to burn files is UDF 2.01. To burn a mastered disk,
you must explicitly change this option or use third-party software.
3.3. The
Advantages of NTFS
As compensation
for its incompatibility with Windows 9x, NTFS offers a number of important advantages
over the earlier FAT and FAT32 file systems:
Security On an NTFS volume, you can restrict access to files
and folders using permissions. You can add an extra layer of
protection by encrypting files if your edition of Windows 7 supports it.
On a FAT or FAT32 drive, anyone with physical access to your computer
can access any files stored on that drive.
Reliability Because NTFS is a journaling file system, an
NTFS volume can recover from disk errors more readily than a FAT32
volume. NTFS uses log files to keep track of all disk activity. In the
event of a system crash, Windows 7 can use this journal to repair file
system errors automatically when the system is restarted. In addition,
NTFS can dynamically remap clusters that contain bad sectors and mark
those clusters as bad so that the operating system no longer uses them.
FAT and FAT32 drives are more vulnerable to disk errors.
Expandability Using NTFS-formatted volumes, you can expand
storage on existing volumes without having to back up, repartition,
reformat, and restore.
Efficiency On
partitions greater than 8 GB, NTFS volumes manage space more efficiently
than FAT32. The maximum partition size for a FAT32 drive created by
Windows 7 is 32 GB; by contrast, you can create a single NTFS volume of
up to 16 terabytes (16,384 GB) using default settings, and by tweaking
cluster sizes you can ratchet the maximum volume size up to 256 terabytes.
Optimized
Storage of Small Files Files on the order of a hundred bytes or less can be stored
entirely within the Master File Table (MFT) record, rather than
requiring a minimum allocation unit outside the MFT. This results in
greater storage efficiency for small files.
Note:
For more
information about the NTFS, FAT, and UDF file systems, see the white
paper at w7io.com/2502.
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Microsoft
introduced the Extended FAT (exFAT) file system first with Windows
Embedded CE 6.0, an operating system designed for industrial controllers
and consumer electronics devices. Subsequently, exFAT was made
available in Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1). Its principal advantage
over FAT32 is scalability. The exFAT file system removes the 32-GB
volume and 4-GB file-size limitations of FAT32. It also handles more
than 1000 files per directory. Its principal disadvantage is limited
backward compatibility. Systems running Windows XP, for example, require
a hotfix to read exFAT32 devices, and non-PC consumer electronics
devices, at this time, are more likely to be able to read earlier FAT
systems than exFAT.
If you're
formatting a high-capacity media player and expect to store large video
files on it, exFAT might be a good file-system choice. If you're
formatting a flash disk to use to transfer data from your Windows 7 system to other computers
running Windows XP or Windows Vista, you're probably better off
sticking with FAT32. And if you're planning to take that flash disk to a
photo kiosk at your local convenience store, FAT32 is definitely the
way to go.
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Whatever formatting
options you choose, you will be warned that the action of formatting a
volume makes that volume's data inaccessible. That's true. Whatever data
is there when you format will no longer be available to you by normal
means after you format. Unless you use the /P switch, the data remains
in some form, however. If you're really concerned about covering tracks,
either use the format /P:x (where x represents the
number of passes) or wipe the disk after you format it, by using the
command-line program Cipher.exe, with the
/W switch. (Type cipher /? at the command prompt for details.)
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