Determining Which File System To Use - Gateway DX4320 Hardware Installation Manual

Chapter 6: Setting up the New Drive Manually

Determining which file system to use

There are three types of file systems used to manage data on the hard drive:
■
File Allocation Table (FAT)16 lets your computer address 2.1 GB of drive
space per partition.
■ FAT32 lets your computer address up to 1 TB (1 terabyte) of drive space
per partition.
■ NT File System (NTFS) lets your computer address all of the drive space
as one partition.
Select the operating system and the file system to use:
Operating system
Windows 95
Windows 95 with USB (OSR2)
Windows 98 and Windows 98 Second Edition
Windows Me
Windows NT 4.0*
Windows 2000**
Windows XP
* If you are creating a boot drive and your operating system is
Windows NT 4.0, we recommend that you use FAT16 to partition the
primary partition (up to 2 GB) of the drive and use NTFS to create the
extended partition.
** If you are creating a boot drive and your operating system is
Windows 2000, we recommend that you use FAT32 to partition the
primary partition (up to 4 GB) of the drive and use NTFS to create the
extended partition.
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File system used
FAT16
FAT32
FAT32
FAT32
FAT16 (primary); NTFS (extended)
FAT32 (primary); NTFS (extended)
NTFS
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