Windows File System Types

As Windows has evolved, so has the way it stores data. Advances in the file systems have come about primarily due to limitations of their predecessors.

FAT - File Allocation Table, was introduced with DOS and is named after the file used to keep track of all the other files on the disk the file allocation table. FAT was later renamed FAT16 so as to differentiate it from its successor FAT32. The main limitations of FAT16 were the 8.3 naming convention, which limited file names to 8 letters with a 3 letter file extension, and the maximum disk partition limit of approx 2GB.

VFAT - Virtual File Allocation Table - This was more of an enhancement to FAT than a new file system. It was released with Windows 95 and allowed for longer filenames (up to 255 chars), but for backward compatibility created an 8.3 name for each file. The 2GB disk partition limit still existed in VFAT.

FAT32 - FAT32 was based on VFAT and was released with an update to Windows 95 (Service release 2), it was required to allow Windows to work with disk sizes larger than 2GB, which were becoming common place. It allowed for maximum partition sizes of 2048GB. FAT32 is supported in Windows 98/Me/2000/XP.

NTFS - NT File System - This file system was not based on either FAT16 or FAT32 and was released with Windows NT, it is the file system of choice for Windows NT/2000/XP. NTFS is a journalling file system and features advances in file security and compression as well as providing RAID support.

What Filesystem do I Choose?

When you are installing Windows, depending on the version you may be asked to choose a filesystem to use. Generally speaking with Windows NT/2000/XP you would choose NTFS for its stability and high performance, for Windows 95 Service Release 2 and Windows 98 opt for FAT32, and any OS prior to that, FAT.
If you intend to dual boot your system the choice of filesystem becomes somewhat more complex, since you potentially have to have more than one filesystem on more than one disk or partition, which introduces compatibility and data access problems.