If you are observant enough you should notice when you try to defrag your hard drive, the file system of any USB drive usually in FAT32. Even if you try to format your USB drive you are only left with 2 option; FAT and FAT32.
FAT32 is the default setting in Windows XP and there must be a good reason why it is set so. Examining the pros and cons of each system file seems to be a perfect way of portraying the essence of FAT32 system and why we want it to be formatted in NTFS. The following are the pros and cons regarding these file systems and how to enable NTFS system in the hard drive.
NTFS: Pros & Cons
Let’s get down to the advantages and disadvantages of FAT32 and NTFS.
Advantages: Enabling NTFS in removable storage devices allows us to add allow and deny permissions on individual files and folders for specific Windows users; that’s the function not available in FAT file system. NTFS also allows files to be encrypted by using Windows XP’s built-in encryption.
Space on the storage device can also be improved due to compression capability. Last but not least disk quotas can also be set and even creating partitions!
Disadvantages:
There are, however, few drawbacks when using NFTS on a USB drive. First and foremost, it requires more writing to the USB drive. Thus slower access to the device but not to the extend that turns off people from using it.
As far as the encryption is concerned you will not be able to access them from other computers. This could be a perfect feature, depending to what extend you want to secure the USB drive. If you think this will cause trouble when you need to do use it in multiple stations then don’t do the files encryption.
How to enable USB drive with NTFS?
1. You need to connect your USB device to your computer, that’s for sure. Right-click on My Computer from the desktop and choose Manage.
2. Click on “Device Manager” and expand out “Disk Drives”. There are maybe couple of drives depending on how many USB drive & hard drive connected to your PC.
3. Right click on USB drive and select “properties”. After that, click on the “Policies” tab and choose “Optimize for performance” radio button. Finally click OK and you are done!
If you right-click on USB drive and select “Format..” you will see NTFS is now available.
