Hands on: NTFS revisited

We’ve dealt with the pros and cons of the NTFS file system compared with Fat32 in the past: to recap, NTFS wins all round. It can deal with larger disks, larger files and is more robust.

Although it has been around since 1993, it was only implemented in Windows NT and 2000: users of 95, 98 and ME were stuck with Fat and Fat32. Windows XP reunited the ‘pros’ with the ‘consumers’, with NTFS as an option in both Pro and Home versions.

Apart from supporting bigger disks (256TB) and bigger files (16TB), NTFS offers metadata and journalling. The first lets you see more information about your files; for example, the shutter speed and aperture setting of a digital photo. The second keeps a record of changes to the file system before the changes are made.

So if, for instance, there’s a power failure in the middle of a disk write, it becomes much easier for the operating system to sort this out on rebooting. For the user, this means the reprimand and detention following an ‘improper shutdown’ in Windows ME and 98 are things of the past.

NTFS brings with it three extras: compression, quotas and encryption. The first lets you save disk space by compressing files and folders. System-wide file compression is nothing new: MS-Dos 6.2 came with Drivespace, and this was pre-dated by Stac Electronics Stacker in 1991.

Unlike those utilities, however, NTFS compression can be used with individual files and folders as well as a drive. Although the techniques are similar, this is not the same as creating compressed (Zip) folders.

Compressed files and folders should have their names in blue. Check this option is enabled in Folder Options, View. Certain files and folders are compressed by default. In your Windows folder, all the hotfix uninstall folders will be in blue, with names such as $NtUninstallKB925486$.

You can compress files and folders by right-clicking on them, selecting Properties and clicking the Advanced button on the General tab. A new dialogue will have an option to compress the contents. If you’re working on a folder and you click OK, then OK or Apply from Properties, you’ll be asked to confirm whether or not you want all the subfolders and their files compressed.

Although compression and decompression are completely transparent, there is a school of thought that compression slows down your PC, as the processor has to decompress files each time they’re opened. A rival opinion maintains the opposite, as the bottleneck lies not in the processor but in the disk controller, and with fewer bytes to read, files open more quickly.

Some files, such as text files and Word Doc files (famously described by a Microsoft spokesperson as being “mostly air”) compress well. Others, such asJpg and Gif images, mp3 or other sound files, video files and the new Office 2007 XML format are already compressed. And it is these files that are likely to be taking up the most space on the average PC.

Like this story? Spread the news by clicking below:

 del.icio.us     Digg this     reddit!