Additional NTFS Features than FAT

In addition to supporting larger volumes than FAT, NTFS contains other features that make it better for corporate operations:

• Reliability - A drawback to using FAT is that if a computer goes down, it can be difficult to repair the file system. To make speed recovery, NTFS maintains a log of every transaction that affects the file system. These actions are logged before they are performed. Then, when there is a problem, any incomplete transactions can be completed or changes can be rolled back.
• Mount Points - All Windows versions assign a different drive letter to each partition or volume on a disk, which limits the number of accessible volumes to the 26 letters of the alphabet. Mount Points let the administrator attach other partitions to an empty directory within an already mounted NTFS volume. Rather than being limited to NTFS volumes, these additional volumes can also be using FAT16, FAT32, CDFS or UDF which expands the functionality of this feature.
• Access Control - The Security Descriptor function provides hierarchal access control for each file or directory in an NTFS volume. It is important to understand that the security features built into Windows NT/2000/XP/Vista/7 only work with NTFS. If you use FAT, you lose all security functionality and place the organization at risk.
• Disk Quotas - NTFS permits assigning of storage quotas on a per-user basis. It does this by tracking the Security ID (SID) of anyone who creates a file or directory. When the limit is exceeded, the system sends a "Disk Full" error report and logs it in the Event Log.
• Encryption - When the computer is running Windows 2000, NTFS includes Microsoft's Encrypting File System (EFS) which automatically encrypts and decrypts files without user intervention. This is particularly useful for remote users, since laptops are frequently lost or stolen and one can't rely on users to remember to encrypt their files.

These and other features are not available with FAT.

Article Source: http://www.auerbach-publications.com/dynamic_data/2770_1640_Windows%20File%20Systems.htm


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You can convert file system from FAT to NTFS without data loss by using Partition Assistant.