If you are using a drive larger than 32GB in Windows 2000/XP/Vista/7 or 2000/2003 Server, it is highly recommended to use the NTFS filesystem. It has been observed that beyond 32GB, a FAT32 filesystem becomes unstable. Disk Management in these operating systems will not allow the creation of FAT32 partitions beyond 32GB.
External drives come preformatted in either FAT32 or HFS (Mac) for cross-compatibility with multiple platforms. It is recommended to reformat the drive to use your native filesystem.
Common Operating systems and their native file systems:
Win95/98/Me: FAT32
Win2000/XP/Server/Vista: NTFS
Mac OS 9/10: OS Extended
Both FAT and NTFS come in several different variations, and in some cases, the type of device you are working with determines which variation is used. With FAT, the number of bits used with the allocation table determines the variant you are working with and the maximum volume size. Y Read more: http://www.bench3.com/2010/02/difference-between-fat-and-ntfs-fat.html
Access flags are your only choice for controlling how files or folders are used with FAT, but NTFS allows you to control the way files are used with both access flags and NTFS permissions. Read More : http://www.bench3.com/2010/02/setting-ntfs-permissions-in-windows.html
