Windows – Benefits of converting Data partition from NTFS to FAT32

fat32filesystemsntfspartitioningwindows xp

Desktop PC with internal SSD is running Windows XP SP3 and partitioned as below.

Windows XP partitions on SSD

Over time I've come to learn that NTFS does many more read/write operations than FAT32 thus possibly reducing the longevity of an SSD. That's a factor but not the main factor. What I'm really thinking about is the Data partition. All external drives have FAT32 file system, so I started to think maybe it would be better for the Data partition to also use FAT32, maybe for cleaner backups and in case the drive ever needs to be pulled out and plugged in somewhere else the data at least could be more easily recovered.

Windows doesn't have a native utility for NTFS -> FAT32 but AOMEI tech support tells me the following:

Thank you so much for contacting us, if you convert a partition with NTFS file system to FAT32 file system, the creation/modified dates of all the files remain intact.

The question has to do with AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard, which is free for home users and I've used it many times so do recommend it and no I'm not affiliated but it deserves mention.

Taking all of the above here's what I know so far:

  1. Is it possible? Yes

  2. Is the data backed up in case something goes wrong? Yes

  3. Are any of the files in question >4GB or likely to be in future? No

    But, what I don't know (and need advice on is)…

  4. Would it be better to use FAT32 file system for Data partition? (Yes/No)

Best Answer

1) Is it possible?

yes

2) Is the data backed up in case something goes wrong?

no

3) Are any of the files in question >4GB or likely to be in the future?

maybe

4) Would it be better to use FAT32 file system for Data partition? (Yes/No)

no

...and here's why:

  • FAT32 is a less safe filesystem than NTFS, because it doesn't do journaling, which means that if you have a sudden power loss, BSOD, or other momentary unexpected interruption while the filesystem is writing data, the filesystem can wind up in an inconsistent state, and you can lose data. NTFS can still lose data, but it will always roll back to the most recent consistent state, even if it is shut off unexpectedly, so your files will at worst still work, even if they don't have the most recent contents. By contrast, FAT32 breaks and lets you keep both pieces (of corrupt data).
  • NTFS does not do a significant-enough amount of extra writing to the SSD to make it worth the performance, feature, and data safety degradation that FAT32 suffers compared to NTFS.

Unless you have a very unusual workload for your computer, it is never a good idea to use FAT32 over NTFS. And by "very unusual" I mean something like a constant amount of saturated writing to the disk in random files, etc. Otherwise the SSD will not wear out appreciably slower on FAT32; you'll just end up with less features in your filesystem and more chance of losing data.

Also, no filesystem on the planet can protect against hardware failure of your SSD/HDD if the only copy of the file you have is on that disk... not NTFS, not FAT32, not reFS, nothing; so "the data is only backed up" if you back it up to a separate machine. Just keep that in mind. (this paragraph is in response to your question "2) Is the data backed up in case something goes wrong?" -- the answer is "only if you're backing up the data to another storage device").

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