Vista - Does Vista Support FAT or only NTFS

I've been reading several books on Vista and in one of them it indicated that
FAT and FAT32 were supported in Vista but NTFS was preferred. Later in the
same book it says that Vista only supports NTFS...just wanted to get some
insight into this.

Thanks

Vista supports fat32/16 but can only be installed on an NTFS partition.

--


Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)

Quote from George Ankner:
If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!

"Tami N" <TamiN@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:83275DAD-D0D3-4E61-ADE2-15B39B8249F9@microsoft.com...
> I've been reading several books on Vista and in one of them it indicated
> that
> FAT and FAT32 were supported in Vista but NTFS was preferred. Later in
> the
> same book it says that Vista only supports NTFS...just wanted to get some
> insight into this.
>
> Thanks

Vista can only be installed on an NTFS partition. With Windows XP you could
install it on a FAT32 file system or an NTFS file system. If you installed
XP on a FAT32 file system you also had the option of converting the
disk/partition to NTFS after XP had been installed. This is one of the
differences between XP and Vista. Vista, however, doesn't install on a FAT32
file system; it only installs on an NTFS file system.

--
John Barnett MVP
Associate Expert
Windows - Shell/User

Web: http://xphelpandsupport.mvps.org
Web: http://vistasupport.mvps.org

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"Tami N" <TamiN@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:83275DAD-D0D3-4E61-ADE2-15B39B8249F9@microsoft.com...
> I've been reading several books on Vista and in one of them it indicated
> that
> FAT and FAT32 were supported in Vista but NTFS was preferred. Later in
> the
> same book it says that Vista only supports NTFS...just wanted to get some
> insight into this.
>
> Thanks

Vista is itself FAT.. very FAT and bloated... a pig a rino, a hippo.... you
get the drift.

other than that it cannot install on fat32 like XP could.. but it can READ
all kinds of fat and ntfs of course

If Vista needs 10 gb to install, and vista really needs 20 gb minimum to
function.. then you can imagine the problems.. since
win2k and XP had a limit of 32 GB for fat disks...

see here http://www.allensmith.net/Storage/HDDlimit/FAT32.htm

you could say that they would extend this limit for vista... but they wanted
to kill fat anyway....

There is room for ONLY 1 FATSO in the Vista era... and that is Vista itself!
:-)

"Tami N" <TamiN@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:83275DAD-D0D3-4E61-ADE2-15B39B8249F9@microsoft.com...
> I've been reading several books on Vista and in one of them it indicated
> that
> FAT and FAT32 were supported in Vista but NTFS was preferred. Later in
> the
> same book it says that Vista only supports NTFS...just wanted to get some
> insight into this.
>
> Thanks

ahh yes there is another reason why they killed fat...

They wanted to change the structure of vistas basic files, so
they have done some tricks with the files by creating virtual paths for
legacy programs to still function...

basically they made a mess of this.. but anyway.... you could not do that
with fat32.. only NTFS supports this.

Everything about vista is a mess... so Im not surprised.

"Tami N" <TamiN@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:83275DAD-D0D3-4E61-ADE2-15B39B8249F9@microsoft.com...
> I've been reading several books on Vista and in one of them it indicated
> that
> FAT and FAT32 were supported in Vista but NTFS was preferred. Later in
> the
> same book it says that Vista only supports NTFS...just wanted to get some
> insight into this.
>
> Thanks

On Fri, 25 May 2007 13:49:26 -0400, "Richard Urban"
<richardurbanREMOVETHIS@hotmail.com> wrote:

>Vista supports fat32/16


And, let me add, for the sake of completeness, FAT12 (the file system
used on diskettes and very small hard drives).


> but can only be installed on an NTFS partition.

--
Ken Blake, Microsoft MVP Windows - Shell/User
Please Reply to the Newsgroup

On Fri, 25 May 2007 22:26:23 +0300, "Tiberius" <James@tiberius.kirk>
wrote:


>If Vista needs 10 gb to install, and vista really needs 20 gb minimum to
>function.. then you can imagine the problems.. since
>win2k and XP had a limit of 32 GB for fat disks...


No, there was/is no such limit. The 32GB limit is the limit of how
large a FAT32 partition can be *created*. There is no problem using a
larger one if it is created externally.

--
Ken Blake, Microsoft MVP Windows - Shell/User
Please Reply to the Newsgroup

yes I know... windows ME could create fat32 partitions and format them with
practically no limit
*there are limits but there are no drives so big yet*.

I also used partition magic, that unfortunatly is no longer compatible with
vista.. a shame... norton bought it now and they killed it.

but then again.. in fat32 you have the 4 gb file limit.. meaning that one
file could not be larger than 4 gb..

generally I like ntfs far better than fat32... some people liked fat32
because they said it was faster...
however I didnt notice any difference ever, and for me ntfs was always more
stable..


"Ken Blake, MVP" <kblake@this.is.am.invalid.domain> wrote in message
news:i9fe535hpfpfrnemucs8bnidg8n6s17pfb@4ax.com...
> On Fri, 25 May 2007 22:26:23 +0300, "Tiberius" <James@tiberius.kirk>
> wrote:
>
>
>>If Vista needs 10 gb to install, and vista really needs 20 gb minimum to
>>function.. then you can imagine the problems.. since
>>win2k and XP had a limit of 32 GB for fat disks...
>
>
> No, there was/is no such limit. The 32GB limit is the limit of how
> large a FAT32 partition can be *created*. There is no problem using a
> larger one if it is created externally.
>
> --
> Ken Blake, Microsoft MVP Windows - Shell/User
> Please Reply to the Newsgroup

Heloo!

"Tiberius" <James@tiberius.kirk> wrote in message news:Ouoj4JwnHHA.3952@TK2MSFTNGP03.phx.gbl...
> Vista is itself FAT.. very FAT and bloated... a pig a rino, a hippo.... you get the drift.

LOL!

BTW, there is a new file system supported in Vista:
exFAT = Extremely FAT
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa914353.aspx
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ExFAT

Cheers, Roman

Tiberius wrote:

> Vista is itself FAT.. very FAT and bloated... a pig a rino, a hippo....
> you get the drift.
>
Like this? http://youtube.com/watch?v=1EbCyibkNB0

Love and Kisses,
Doris

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