How to speed up NTFS formatted drives

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Key Keeper
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How to speed up NTFS formatted drives

Post by Key Keeper »

I installed 2000 on a few notebooks and xp on maybe two or three and I noticed that xp installed as NTFS on a notebook with 256mb ram was at least two times slower than with fat 32. I thought ntfs would be the better of the two on a fresh install. I never tried it with 2000, would this hold true also? It seems quicker to me with fat 32 but maybe im wrong. The notebook I am using now is no speed demon that is why Im asking. XP on 320mb of ram (500mhz Armada).
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FlyingPenguin
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Post by FlyingPenguin »

Lots of benchmarks have been done and NTFS is no slower than FAT32, or mabe by a small but negligable amount.

You DO get a performance penalty if Indexing is enabled with NTFS. HOWEVER the WRONG thing to do is to just disable the indexing service. Proper instructions here:
In Windows XP right-click on My Computer and click Manage.

In Windows XP Computer Management window expand the following:

- Services and Applications
- Indexing Service
- System
- Directories

and make sure all directories listed show No for the Include in Catalog. If not, double-click on the directory or directories and select No to Include in Index.

Double-click on My Computer, right-click on the C: drive and click Properties, unselect Allow Indexing Service to index this disk for fast file searching. Click Apply.

In the Confirm Attribute Changes window select Apply changes to C:\, subfolders and files and click OK to continue.

When complete, close the C: Properties window.
Afterwards you can disable indexing if you want, but it's not necessary. Windows will not run the Indexing service if you perform the above steps.
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Key Keeper
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Post by Key Keeper »

Making the changes now. See how is goes n a min.
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