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8.4

Laptop file systems - FAT32 vs NTFS

Asked by nicedreams in General Laptop

Tags: acer_servic, acerdata, vs

Hi.

I recently purchased an Acer Travelmate Laptop which I'm very pleased with and it runs very well.

The hard disk is split into 3 partitons - ACER (FAT32) 27.49Gb, ACERDATA (FAT32) 9.77Gb and ACER_SERVIC (FAT) 8Mb.

I am puzzled as to why Acer would take it upon themselves to partion the disk as I would prefer to decide this for myself. Secondly, I am unsure of the purpose of the 8Mb FAT partion at the end? I assume this has some usage in resetting/recovering the machine, but why exactly is it there? Surely the recovery CD does everything anyway?

Even stranger though, as an IT Technician, I am aware of the advantages of the NTFS file system over the older FAT32 system. This being the case, can anyone explain or suggest why Acer would choose to ship the laptop with FAT32 and FAT file systems rather than the modern and preferable NTFS file system?

I appreciate that the drive(s) could be converted to NTFS using a command line utility, but would there be any possible implications of doing so and is it really worth it? Would I still be able to use the recovery disk? This page from Microsoft (http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/convert.mspx) states that "Volumes converted from FAT to NTFS lack some performance benefits compared to volumes initially formatted with NTFS" which, again, points me off.

I have sent an email inquiry to Acer support but I suspect that I will be fobbed off without a good answer. Somebody, somewhere must know why!

Any ideas or comments?

Josh.
[+][-]11/21/04 01:24 PM, ID: 12639966Accepted Solution

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Zone: General Laptop
Tags: acer_servic, acerdata, vs
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Solution Provided By: rid
Participating Experts: 2
Solution Grade: A
 
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