No win 98 or ME will not see the NTFS ,NTFS is more stable and the single file size can be upto 2Gigs .thats the main difference to my knowledge.one way or the other it wouldn't matter what one you use ,thats my opinion !

so, based on your post, the only difference is that it can handle a single file up to the size of 2Gigs. what do you mean by more stable? stable in what way?
tnx.

check this out.... NTFS vs FAT
this should be the info yous need your welcome :lol:

Q: How does NTFS compared to FAT32 in Windows XP, and which is faster?

A: NTFS has much more built-in features than FAT, so generally it is a bit slower.

However it depends on many factors such as cluster size, average file size, etc.

For example, NTFS can keep small files inside MFT entry, so if the file size is less than cluster size, most likely it will be accessed much faster on NTFS than on FAT.

Generally speaking the performance of NTFS on large volumes is higher than performance of FAT32. NTFS performance on small volumes is lower than performance of FAT/FAT32.

Thank you very much for the info RC_Razor. what if my win2k crashes and I want to boot from a floppy? is there a bootdisk that can access an NTFS? if there is, then I'll probably have to repartition my HDD to NTFS since everything you've said sums up everything to the NTFS being way much better than FAT/FAT32.

not sure about the boot disk disk but to add more information on the difference between the two.

The biggest difference comes when you network and share files over a LAN,

FAT: you can specify only down to which folder to share, and you can add a password to it, but anyone on the LAN who has the password can get into it.

NTFS: You can share files down to a specific file and not a whole directory and you can type in which computers can access it. So if you want no one else but a certain computer to read the file over the LAN, you can set it to do so, but not in FAT

Can you do that to FAT32 on win2k? I mean, share a specific file?

no, on fat32, you can only narrow down to the directory, either the whole directory or nothing at all. NTFS adds more flexibility so you are allowed to specify which files to share. It isn't really dependent on the OS just format type.

things i didnt know ^ thanks... im also unsure about the boot disk .... and your welcome for the info...