Warp wrote:
>   Question: Assuming fully defragmented data, which is faster to read data
> from a few big files: FAT32 or NTFS?

If you're reading the entire file, I would guess it's roughly equal. If 
you're seeking around a lot, I'd guess it's NTFS.

Why?  FAT uses a linked list of clusters, with the first cluster pointed to 
be the directory entry, as the allocated clusters of the file. (That's the 
File Allocation Table: the linked lists.)

NTFS just stores the first cluster and number of clusters in the file table, 
so calculating what cluster a given block of the file is on is probably 
easier and requires fewer trips back to the start of the disk. I.e., you 
don't have to read the disk to seek in the file.

You can even hear this if you have a floppy drive. Copy a 1 meg file to a 
floppy, and you can hear the seek back to the FAT every handful of tracks 
written.

This is just a guess, mind. I wouldn't think there's a whole lot of 
difference on a machine with enough memory to hold the whole FAT in kernel 
buffers.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   There's no CD like OCD, there's no CD I knoooow!

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