is it ok to defrag FAT32 exteral harddrive

[catscurlyear]

hi there, i was just wondering if it is ok to defrag my fat32 external harddrive with smart defrag.thanks

[Luc J. Patenaude]

hi there, i was just wondering if it is ok to defrag my fat32 external harddrive with smart defrag.thanks

 

Depends. Is it your main boot drive or a secondary app. data storage drive?

 

If, it is the main one, yes, it is ok to use smartdefrag 6.1.0. If not, just highlight the D: drive then, select the mode of Defragmentation you want.

I strongly suggest: Defrag and Optimization.

 

You should convert to NTFS type of partition. It is, way, more performant in that, way more advanced version of HD partitioning. Doing so, before using SmartDefrag, is strongly advised(from me, at least-and Microsoft also).:idea:

 

Good Luck!

;-)

[catscurlyear]

Depends. Is it your main boot drive or a secondary app. data storage drive?

 

If, it is the main one, yes, it is ok to use smartdefrag 6.1.0. If not, just highlight the D: drive then, select the mode of Defragmentation you want.

I strongly suggest: Defrag and Optimization.

 

You should convert to NTFS type of partition. It is, way, more performant in that, way more advanced version of HD partitioning. Doing so, before using SmartDefrag, is strongly advised(from me, at least-and Microsoft also).:idea:

 

Good Luck!

;-)

 

the external hard drive is just for storage it is freecom classic sl 80 gig ,my main pc is 300 gig hard drive 2 gig ram dual core .i use the external drive to store audio files for my music program cubase(i just keep audio files seperate from main pc in case pc dies), how do i convert from fat32 to NTFS ? what is the reason for fat32 if you don`t like it? what are the benefits of NTFS?why should`nt you defrag fat32 ,sorry about all the Q`s hope you find time to answer them thanks.

[solbjerg]

Hi catscurlyear

There are several articles about FAT and NTFS in "Help and Support" in the Windows installation.

MS-DOS FAT

Windows 3.1 FAT

Windows 95 FAT

Windows 95 OSR2 FAT, FAT32

Windows 98 FAT, FAT32

Windows 2000 FAT32, NTFS

Windows XP FAT32, NTFS

The above table was copied from there.

FAT means File Allocation Table

NTFS means New Technology File System

Cheers

solbjerg

 

the external hard drive is just for storage it is freecom classic sl 80 gig ,my main pc is 300 gig hard drive 2 gig ram dual core .i use the external drive to store audio files for my music program cubase(i just keep audio files seperate from main pc in case pc dies), how do i convert from fat32 to NTFS ? what is the reason for fat32 if you don`t like it? what are the benefits of NTFS?why should`nt you defrag fat32 ,sorry about all the Q`s hope you find time to answer them thanks.

[catscurlyear]

thanks for that i`ll take a look

[Luc J. Patenaude]

Added info. onto the benefits of N.T.F.S.

 

That new File System also bring an overall booster at finding the files onto today's way larger Hard Drives, it is called: 'Master File Table' or, MFT for short.:wink:

 

The Master File Table will enlarge the clusters onto the partition of your drives and, of course, is, the overhaul made upon the old File Allocation Table(FAT). It also uses the the chipset of your drives to speed up the process of finding the apps. in their entirety and sending all of their data files to the main processor at a faster than light rate(milliseconds per transfer).

 

Please note: That Windows Vista automatically clean installs in the NTFS format for optimum performance of that newly configured PC(both 32bit and 64bit formatted Editions). It is said(by rumours only) that the next O.S. of Microsoft, will bring another form of file management implementation to its database processing abilities and, will bring a much anticipated redirection of file copying while installing any application program onto any size of Hard Disk(probably avoiding the randomization and scattering of files data all over the surface of the disk and help the laser encrypter to focus at writing every file in the same set of clusters and, avoiding corrupting these files by fragmenting them too much).

 

I do hope, that I did not flood your mind too much, about technology engineering. And, have a nice week.

8-)

[catscurlyear]

thank you very much for replying and of course i have`nt a clue what you`re talking about ,but at least now, i know my external drive could be better, so i will definatly be looking in to it .i`ll be back again if i get stuck,thanks :idea: