File Systems

There are some important distinctions that must be made in regards to the type of file system to use on your system. Windows Server 2003 supports FAT, FAT32, and NTFS, although it is highly recommended to format using NTFS. NTFS is required as the file system when Active Directory is installed. We will cover compression and encryption as features of the NTFS file system. FAT The FAT file system is actually two different flavours: FAT16 and FAT32. FAT16 is generally referred to as simply FAT, and FAT32 is used to differentiate between the versions. FAT16 was widely used in NT 4.0 systems. FAT32 was introduced with Windows 95 SR2 and support for both versions of FAT was built in to all subsequent Windows operating systems, including Server 2003. FAT gets its name because it uses a file allocation table to keep track of data on the disk. When data is stored on a physical disk, it may be stored in multiple clusters and the cluster may or may not be contiguous. A table is created that maps files to the clusters where they are located and contains information about their sequential order so the file can be located and read. A table entry is 16 bits in length. When FAT32 was introduced, it extended the table length to 32 bits per entry. This increased the amount of disk space supported from 512MB to two terabytes. FAT needs to be used if you are going to dual-boot a machine with Windows 95, 98, or ME, and any of the 2000, XP, or 2003 products. Previous versions of Windows can only read partitions that have been formatted with FAT. NOTE If you are using dynamic disks, you cannot format a volume with FAT or FAT32 using Disk Management. If you need to format a volume on a dynamic disk with FAT or FAT32, you must use the format command from the command prompt. Use the following syntax: format x: /fs:fat32 or format x: /fs:fat. NTFS NTFS is the file system of choice for Windows Server 2003. NTFS was introduced as a file system with NT 4.0 and has seen some improvements. NTFS version 5.0 was introduced with Windows 2000 Server and is fully supported in Windows Server 2003. NTFS supports compression, encryption, and disk quotas. NTFS is also required for Active Directory. The Active Directory database must be installed on an NTFS volume. NTFS uses a master file table (MFT) that is similar to the file allocation table used by FAT and FAT32, but much more efficient. Due to the different architecture, NTFS is not readable by Windows 98, 95, or earlier operating systems. If you are creating a dual-boot machine using Windows 98 and Server 2003, you must create a FAT partition for data that must be accessible by either operating system. This does not mean that Windows 98 and 95 computers cannot access network resources placed on NTFS volumes. Any operating system can still access resources across the network. NTFS supports additional attributes not available on FAT volumes, such as compression, encryption, file and folder level security, and quota management.