Hi Rad

Just sorting through my old favourites and stumbled across your site for the first time in...ohhh...months...nee...years.

Anyhow, after much article reading, I stumbled across your forums. So here goes...

Having just migrated to XP from ME, I would welcome your thoughts on the following:

1. I currently have an IBM22GXP 9.1GB Drive partitioned 75%/25% both FAT32. Would changing to NTFS make any perceivable difference?

2. Soon adding a 60GB 60GXP. I intend to partition 3 x 20GB. C: for XP, D: for programs (Office/Games/etc.), E: for backup files. Does this sound reasonable? NTFS or FAT32?

3. Should I keep applications on the C: drive rather than D:?

4. Should I keep the 9GB drive in the PC or 'pass it on' ?

It's my first experience with an NT based OS, having used win 9x exclusively since win95. I never did get round to dual booting, even though I have had NT4 for years but never got round to installing it. I don't see the need to dual boot now I'm on XP and my initial XPeriences [sic] are positive. Would you agree?

Finally, I realise you set this discussion area up as a learning process to yourself, but I would appreciate your thoughts and comments.

PS - another old bookmark from 'back then' was cusl2.com but it seems defunct now!

just to clarify the performance issue...

NTFS, in addition to its added security features, includes much improved storage/handling of meta-data which offers some self-healing properties.  The only drawback of running an NTFS partition over a FAT partition besides the inability to access the drive from DOS based OSes (as you mention above) is a slight performance hit due to overhead of the added security.  However, most of this overhead can be avoided by addding the following registry REG_DWORD entry:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem]
"NtfsDisableLastAccessUpdate"=dword:00000001

You can copy/paste the above section into a new notepad document and save with the ".reg" extension and simply double-click it to install the key.

As for benefit, most don't believe that NTFS offers any at all, but I can attest that I have had quirky problems with FAT partitions that utilities reported as good, yet on conversion to NTFS (via command line convert driverleter: /FS:NTFS) as a last ditch effort before completely reformating/reinstalling, the problem disappeared (MS DevStudio not launching the debugger upon exception).  i have not seen or heard any professional experience or technical reason to conclude that FAT32 would "...work better for some drives" than NTFS.

anyway, food for thought.


-=dave

ps- luv your site - amazingly thorough compilation on the state of digital audio storage and compression.  i'm astonished that i had not run across it before.  as for digital audio compression,i would like to see more actual listening tests surrounding these debates.  with the buzz factor of digital audio compression so high right now, one would think people would be comping at the bit(s) to radify (sorry their claims.  alas, i have found only a dozen or so articles with thorough double-blind listening test results.  however, i just finished your guide.  hopefully going back over it to follow the links will uncover more double-blind test results.

pps-as an addition to the Jeff Johnson info on the last page of your digital audio guide, i would link to the originator of the actual project:

http://www.anders.com/projects/route66/

I have been on the route66 mailing list since the anders article was published in the now defunct Maximum Linux magazine and it is comming along slowly, but surely.  although it was originally devised for the car, it has become more of an appliance oriented project.