Which OS to Use

edperks · May 30, 2002, 10:19 PM

Ive been having problem with XP Home Im getting ready to format my drive but was wondering which OS to use WIN98se or XP Home or Win2000pro I have all three and was wondering what would run my games better , faster ans more stable.

Zardon · May 31, 2002, 12:27 AM

well this is going to open a massive can of worms and has been discussed so many times now ..... I would opt always for XP pro if you can, or home in your case, its based on the NT code, like win 2k, with better driver support and stability (waits for the flames).

DLLs are also handled in a much superior way ... if you want I can post more details about all this tomorrow, but its 1 am here and I need sleep.

as for the 9x code, ie win 95,98,98se,millenium... it has its followers like digital wanderer, but I wouldnt touch it again, it was never good with memory or stability, and thankfully its history. XP is the way forward. and will continue to grow stronger as time moves on.

Vaporizer · May 31, 2002, 03:34 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Zardon
DLLs are also handled in a much superior way ... if you want I can post more details about all this tomorrow, but its 1 am here and I need sleep.

Yes please do.

Zardon · May 31, 2002, 07:50 AM

A common source of problems in previous versions of windows is DLL hell, the irritating instability that results when poorly written applications replace crucial system flfiles with outdated or incorrect versions. Windows XP monitors these crucial system files, preserving the correct version of the system file while allowing the program you just installed to use its own DLL file.

When Microsoft first released Windows NT, it came with support for three file systems: FAT, HPFS, and NTFS. Microsoft originally designed FAT for DOS, IBM introduced HPFS for OS/2, and Microsoft created NTFS for NT. NTFS is NT's native format, and NT supports the FAT and HPFS formats to provide migration paths from the other operating systems (although Microsoft didn't include support for HPFS in NT 4.0).

Microsoft's implementation goal for NTFS was to overcome the limitations of the other two NT-compatible file systems and provide the advanced features that an enterprise-level operating system requires. For example, NTFS supports file and directory-granular security, whereas FAT and HPFS have no security capability. In addition, NTFS's allocation scheme can efficiently address huge disks—FAT and HPFS both are limited to disk sizes that are challenged by today's commodity hardware. Finally, of the three file systems, NTFS is the only one that's Unicode-enabled for international environments and has built-in data reliability features to prevent file and file system corruption if the system fails.

In the late 1980s, Microsoft designed NTFS in parallel with the initial development of NT. After NTFS's basic infrastructure was in place and functional, Microsoft directed the NT programming team to use NTFS as the file system for its NT development systems. This arrangement created an effective feedback loop for the NTFS developers.

Because NTFS was to be a new file system from the ground up, its design could incorporate features that would overcome the limitations of existing PC file systems and anticipate the demands of NT's enterprise users down the road. The most obvious way to focus attention on NTFS was to make it scale with ever-expanding disks. All Windows file systems divide a disk partition into logical allocation units known as clusters. The FAT file system uses 16-bit entries to reference clusters, so at most FAT can address 216 or 65,536 clusters. Clusters can vary in size according to the size of a disk, but large clusters result in internal fragmentation, or wasted space inside clusters. For example, if a file has only 250 bytes of data, it still requires an entire cluster of allocated disk space, which results in more than 15KB of wasted space on a disk with 16KB clusters.

With only 65,536 clusters of addressing capability, a FAT drive with 1KB clusters can cover a 65MB disk. Today's 4GB or larger disks require FAT clusters of 64KB—a size that typically yields large amounts of wasted space. In contrast, NTFS references clusters with 64-bit addresses. Thus, even with 512-byte clusters, NTFS can map disks up to sizes that we won't likely see even in the next few decades.

The developers of FAT and HPFS overlooked file system security, but NTFS uses the same security model as NT. Discretionary access control lists (DACLs) and system access control lists (SACLs), which control who can perform operations on a file and what events will trigger logging of actions performed on a file, are stored in their native NT form within NTFS. This approach makes managing NTFS security a natural fit with general NT security administration.

The FAT file system uses the ASCII 8-bit character set in its file and directory name scheme. Employing the ASCII character set constrains FAT names to English (and some symbolic) characters. NT and NTFS both use the Unicode 16-bit character set for names. This attribute of NTFS lets NT users around the world manage their files using their native language.

FAT's model of data stored within a file is a one-unit approach. In contrast, NTFS lets several data streams exist within a file. The NTFS unnamed data stream is equivalent to the traditional FAT view of file data, but NTFS named streams can refer to alternative units of data. The named-stream model has not come into widespread use on NTFS (there isn't even a Win32 programming API that can access this capability), but Services for Macintosh (SFM) relies on the named-stream model to transparently let Macintosh clients use named streams on NTFS network drives as they do on their native Hierarchical File System (HFS) drives.

Finally, FAT has no provision for fault-tolerance. If a system crashes while you are creating or updating files and directories, FAT's on-disk structures can become inconsistent. This situation can result in the loss of the data being modified, as well as a general corruption of the drive and the loss of much of the disk's data. This risk is unnecessary and clearly unacceptable for NT's target market. NTFS has built-in transactional logging so that whenever a modification is about to take place, NTFS makes a note of the modification in a special log file. If the system crashes, NTFS can examine the log file and use it to restore the disk to a consistent state with minimal data loss.

NTFS's command central is the Master File Table (MFT). The MFT is analogous to the FAT file system's file allocation table because the MFT maps all the files and directories on the drive, including NTFS's metadata files. The MFT is divided into discrete units known as records. In one or more MFT records, NTFS stores the metadata that describes a file or directory's characteristics (security settings and other attributes such as read-only or hidden) and its location on the disk. Surprisingly, the MFT is also a file that NTFS maps using records within the MFT. This structure lets the MFT grow and shrink, which makes the space NTFS uses for metadata efficiently track the amount of metadata that exists.

NTFS internally identifies files and directories using the position in the MFT of the record describing the start of their metadata. The records are usually 1KB in size on an NTFS 4.0-formatted drive, but they can be larger.

The $MFTMIRR file is another NTFS data-loss prevention measure. $MFTMIRR contains a copy of the first 16 records of the MFT, and NTFS stores the file in the middle of the disk (the MFT starts near the beginning of the disk). If NTFS has trouble reading the MFT, it refers to the duplicate. An NTFS disk's boot record (512 bytes of data at the beginning of the disk) contains entries that locate the position of the MFT and the MFT mirror.

MFT-access performance plays a critical role in the overall performance of an NTFS drive, so NTFS takes a step to keep access fast. Because the MFT is a file on an NTFS drive, it can become fragmented as it grows and shrinks. This fragmentation results because NTFS cannot contiguously allocate the entire MFT in advance. When the MFT grows and other files use the clusters just beyond its end, the MFT must look elsewhere on the disk for available space, which causes discontinuous sequences of clusters in its file map.

The fastest file access occurs when a sequential disk operation can read entire chunks of a file, but a fragmented MFT means that NTFS may require multiple disk operations to read a record, which can lead to lower performance. In an effort to prevent MFT fragmentation, NTFS makes a region of clusters around the MFT off-limits to other files and directories. This area, the MFT-Zone, increases the chance that the MFT will find contiguous clusters or at least keep its data close to other MFT data when it needs to grow. When the disk space outside the MFT-Zone becomes scarce, NTFS relaxes its restriction and clusters from the zone can be allocated for other uses. Thus, the MFT runs a higher risk of becoming fragmented on disks that are near capacity. Unfortunately, NTFS does not let defragmentation tools defragment the MFT.

Vaporizer · May 31, 2002, 02:06 PM

woho thanks

im pasting this to a text file on my harddrive if you dont mind =)

edperks · Jun 1, 2002, 06:06 AM

Zardon,

Thanks for the info, and the knowledge which took some time to type and compile much appreciated. Your forum is awesome.

Thanks Again!

Ijustwannaknow · Jun 1, 2002, 06:33 AM

I like xp

digitalwanderer · Jun 1, 2002, 06:43 AM

XP is still in it's beta period until they release the rest of it on August 14th, and don't listen to none of these fancy-talking high-brow types that make your brain hurt for a couple of pages trying to tell you otherwise. If you thought that reading & comprehending that was bad, (and I agree it is, I ain't going thru it now 'cause it's coincidently 1 am over here and I am none-to-sharp right now.), just wait until you experience the true mysteries of tweaking XP and eliminating all it's spyware & bloat without causing any instabilities. (Not to mention finding decent drivers for ALL of your components....

)

My right eye is seeing round right now and my left eye is seeing square, I gotta go unconscious before I wake up with "qwerty" written on my face backwards again...I just couldn't disapoint Zardon by not ranting a bit on the subject first. (Ranting is MUCHLY more fun when barely conscious!

)

Ijustwannaknow · Jun 1, 2002, 07:23 AM

i dont have any problems with xp

Layden · Jun 1, 2002, 10:39 AM

Depends on your system. If you've got an older machine and you're mainly playing games than I'd stick with Win98. Been running it on my machine for 2 and a half years and have never had to reformat or re-install. All this stuff about it being totally unstable is crap. It's fast for games and that's what matters to me.

Although if you've got a beefy system then I suppose XP isn't going to be quite as slothful as it is on some machines.

Ijustwannaknow · Jun 1, 2002, 04:22 PM

i use xp with a 1ghz 512ddram system no problems all my games play fine.

Dyre Straits · Jun 1, 2002, 04:32 PM

I'm holding off on migrating to XP for two reasons:

1. I'm about to upgrade to a new system anyway;

2. I want to wait until the first SP release is out. That should eliminate a lot of little hassles I'd have otherwise.

Dyre Straits

RadeonMAXX · Jun 2, 2002, 03:46 AM

Bah! F... Windows9x! Sure, 99.99999999999999% of applications work on it, but memory managment just plain sucks & I got sick of blue screens often. I've yet to have one blue screen in XP, expect for the Windows key bug that was in the Radeon drivers; which basically crashes XP in OpenGL when it's pressed. That has been fixed & I've haven't a single crash since I've installed XP months ago.

XP ALL THE WAY!!!

Win9X can die!

digitalwanderer · Jun 2, 2002, 05:56 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by RadeonMAXX
expect for the Windows key bug that was in the Radeon drivers; which basically crashes XP in OpenGL when it's pressed.

I got a slightly preventative fix for that...I pry the f-ing "windows keys" off all the new keyboards I buy and toss them. Save OOODLES of problems!

Arikel · Jun 2, 2002, 06:23 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Layden
Depends on your system. If you've got an older machine and you're mainly playing games than I'd stick with Win98. Been running it on my machine for 2 and a half years and have never had to reformat or re-install. All this stuff about it being totally unstable is crap. It's fast for games and that's what matters to me.

Although if you've got a beefy system then I suppose XP isn't going to be quite as slothful as it is on some machines.

Win98 is unpredictable like that. My girlfriend has used it for gaming for the last three years without a reformat, whereas I had to reformat a few times over the course of two years on this machine. Upgrading to XP was a very good decision for me.

Zardon · Jun 2, 2002, 09:52 AM

some day digitalwanderer will join the rest of us in the year 2002, I could type alot more of the advances of winXP, but some people just like to keep their eyes shut

I used 9x for 5 years, and it was ALWAYS an awful operating system. the memory management and kernel are just pathetic. it should never have been released.

some tips for XP users here http://www.hardwareheaven.com/thread.php?id=1212

UberLord · Jun 2, 2002, 01:15 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by RadeonMAXX
Bthe Windows key bug that was in the Radeon drivers; which basically crashes XP in OpenGL when it's pressed

Okay - lemmie get this straight.

You're pressing the MS Windows key on the keyboard and it's crashing all OpenGL applications in MS Windows XP?

/me sratches head

Blimey!

RadeonMAXX · Jun 2, 2002, 03:03 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by UberLord
Okay - lemmie get this straight.

You're pressing the MS Windows key on the keyboard and it's crashing all OpenGL applications in MS Windows XP?

/me sratches head

Blimey!

Yeah, it was a nagging ass bug. Sometimes you need to go back to the desktop or, it just gets accidently pressed when playing some shoot em up games. Strange bug, but it existed. If that bug ever comes back, I will just do what digi suggested & pop the key out.

When it got pressed, it would hard reset before seeing a quick blue screen.

digitalwanderer · Jun 2, 2002, 03:16 PM

...for a long time, ever since the f-ing windows key came out. I don't think it's a 'bug' per se, I think the card just has a hard time jumping between modes like that. I had that 'bug' with my Xpert98, Rage Fury (non-Pro), radeon, GF2 MX400, and GF3 to various extents. The more advanced the card the less likely it'll crash, but they all hang sometimes in 98 with that.

(Unlike XP which not only gives your pc improved stability, it also gives your PC the ability to walk on water! It's true, just look at the loyal following it provokes!

)

Zardon · Jun 2, 2002, 04:48 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by digitalwanderer
...for a long time, ever since the f-ing windows key came out. I don't think it's a 'bug' per se, I think the card just has a hard time jumping between modes like that. I had that 'bug' with my Xpert98, Rage Fury (non-Pro), radeon, GF2 MX400, and GF3 to various extents. The more advanced the card the less likely it'll crash, but they all hang sometimes in 98 with that.

(Unlike XP which not only gives your pc improved stability, it also gives your PC the ability to walk on water! It's true, just look at the loyal following it provokes! )

with those tweaks I showed, you can not only walk on water, you can hover over it ...... its handy when you see the win9xs floating just under the surface

digitalwanderer · Jun 2, 2002, 06:10 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Zardon
with those tweaks I showed, you can not only walk on water, you can hover over it ...... its handy when you see the win9xs floating just under the surface

To be brutally honest with my self, the only thing I really have against XP is I don't know it very well yet. I'm sure with proper tweakage it is no doubt superior to 98se, but the fact of the matter is that for me 98se is a much more stable OS than XP...but that's only because I've spent a couple of years custom tweaking 98se for my box and when I installed XP (the first week it was out, mistake number one.

) I just tried following some online tweak guides. I had it working pretty decent, but the ATI driver support just was NOT there for me on Blue and Bubble's SB-live 5.1 had some issues with it.

When XP-SP1 comes out, I shall come grovelling for tweaking tips. Never fear.

AT_curiousB · Jun 2, 2002, 08:22 PM

Well I can only speak from experience. As some of yiou know I posted some time back about how to change from a dual boot system, Win ME and Win XP, to a single system of XP.

I followed Zardons advoice and reformatted the drives in NTFS, after having re-combined the partitions, and installed afresh XPpro.

Did I have problems? yep, did I manage to solve them? yep by following the various pieces of advice and tips available here at Driver Heaven so my thanks to all who took the time to share their knowledge.

I have also installed the new release of the Omega/Cyborg drivers, version b is it?, and all is well.

I would recommend anyone, even DW to transfer to XP it is intuitive and helpful to complete novices like myself, once you have tamed the beast it is really cool.

Layden · Jun 2, 2002, 08:57 PM

I will never succumb to the evil XP

Well, not until I get something better than my P3-600 anyway. I've heard that it aint worth running XP on something like that as it is quite power mad.

Dyre Straits · Jun 2, 2002, 10:19 PM

I asked him just today how he likes it. He said he likes it just fine. However, it has continued to give him some grief every single day. One particular problem is that he will often get 'program not responding' and such as that.
Now, I haven't been over to the house enough to spend anytime with it so, I'm not sure what is causing the problems for him. He's found that several of his programs will not run at all on XP, but, I'm sure that's due to needing an update....or he may have to learn how to better use the compatibility mode.
Once I get a newer system, and once the first SP comes out, I'll be more serious about migrating myself.
All that said, I VERY RARELY EVER get a BSOD on my system. It runs fine for me and, if needed, I'm quite content to save what I'm doing and do a reboot to refresh resources.
With what I've got, and how it runs so well, I really cannot complain. Programs run well, games play well, I can capture high quality video via my VIVO card, and do just about anything I desire to do.
I guess what I'm really trying to say is, I'm not writing the final chapter. This is an ongoing saga like with most of us here.

Dyre Straits

Spigot · Jun 2, 2002, 11:27 PM

And I thought you guys knew all there was to know about everything...

Windows, in all its incarnations, is completely bug-free.

Really!

There are no bugs in Windows. Just undocumented 'features'...

hee hee.

That said, I was a loyal 98SE user for a few years until last fall when I got XP Home. Since then, the only issue I had with XP was when I got my new Geforce 4 and XP decided that 'THERE SHALT BE NO IRQ LESS THAN 14' (and my card required IRQ 11)...

Other than that, and the occasional incompatibility with REALLY old games (but surprisingly little of that too), I have nothing but high praise for XP.

Well, it does seem to speed my clock to relativistic speeds occasionally too.
http://www.hardwareheaven.com/thread.php?id=1207

Other than THAT...

No probs, and this is with running it on a P3 500MHz system and a P4 1.6 GHz one. Just takes some getting used to the new layout (though you can tweak it to your heart's content). I do like the built-in burning software and the MP3 to CD Audio conversion software that's in WMP... sure, I could d/l other stuff off the net, but sometimes I'm just lazy.

RadeonMAXX · Jun 3, 2002, 12:20 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Spigot
And I thought you guys knew all there was to know about everything...

Windows, in all its incarnations, is completely bug-free.

Really!

There are no bugs in Windows. Just undocumented 'features'...

hee hee.

There's no such thing as bugfree software.

So the blue screens you get in Win9x is an undoucumented feature??

Jun 3, 2002, 07:55 PM

i went from 98 to XP about 6 months ago
last week i got sick of having to reinstall it every 2-4weeks
different things just kept happening to it
format back to fat32
98 it up again

i cant believe how fast some things are after using XP
/me will stay with 98 till the bitter end when M$ stops supporting it

imho if u want your comp on 24/7 use XP
if u turn your computer off at night 98 is still better

Spigot · Jun 3, 2002, 09:59 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by douver
imho if u want your comp on 24/7 use XP
if u turn your computer off at night 98 is still better

Hmm... That could be a good point. I NEVER turn my system off, so I love XP.

edperks · Jun 3, 2002, 11:41 PM

The only major problem i have had with XP is my Hercules Game Theatre Sound Card just will not work right in my system. I had to put the Soundblaster Live Platium back in and everything running great again. I also love the restore feature in XP

Dyre Straits · Jun 4, 2002, 07:18 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Spigot
Hmm... That could be a good point. I NEVER turn my system off, so I love XP.

....except to do occasional upgrades or maintenance. Otherwise, I may reboot two or three times an evening if I'm going from 'business' to 'gaming'.

Dyre Straits

May 30, 2002, 10:19 PM	#1
edperks HardwareHeaven Senior Member Join Date: May 2002 Location: Southern Illinois Posts: 780 Rep Power: 0 System Specs	Which OS to Use Ive been having problem with XP Home Im getting ready to format my drive but was wondering which OS to use WIN98se or XP Home or Win2000pro I have all three and was wondering what would run my games better , faster ans more stable.

Jun 1, 2002, 06:43 AM	#8
digitalwanderer Colour Commentator Join Date: May 2002 Location: Highland, IN USA Posts: 5,620 Rep Power: 0	Pagh! XP is still in it's beta period until they release the rest of it on August 14th, and don't listen to none of these fancy-talking high-brow types that make your brain hurt for a couple of pages trying to tell you otherwise. If you thought that reading & comprehending that was bad, (and I agree it is, I ain't going thru it now 'cause it's coincidently 1 am over here and I am none-to-sharp right now.), just wait until you experience the true mysteries of tweaking XP and eliminating all it's spyware & bloat without causing any instabilities. (Not to mention finding decent drivers for ALL of your components.... ) My right eye is seeing round right now and my left eye is seeing square, I gotta go unconscious before I wake up with "qwerty" written on my face backwards again...I just couldn't disapoint Zardon by not ranting a bit on the subject first. (Ranting is MUCHLY more fun when barely conscious! ) __________________ WTF is up with the sigs?

Jun 2, 2002, 03:46 AM	#13
RadeonMAXX Made Man Join Date: May 2002 Location: Portland, Oregon USA! Posts: 275 Rep Power: 0	Bah! F... Windows9x! Sure, 99.99999999999999% of applications work on it, but memory managment just plain sucks & I got sick of blue screens often. I've yet to have one blue screen in XP, expect for the Windows key bug that was in the Radeon drivers; which basically crashes XP in OpenGL when it's pressed. That has been fixed & I've haven't a single crash since I've installed XP months ago. XP ALL THE WAY!!! Win9X can die! __________________ WinXP Home Edition/ Service Pack 1 beta(build 1050) Athlon XP@1.4ghz Original Radeon 8500 - ATI CATALYST 2.1 IWiLL KK266 motherboard DirectX 9 beta 2 Download KaZaA now!! http://www.kazaa.com/en/index.php R300 "Crush the Force!" -Dave Orton, Ati President

Jun 2, 2002, 03:16 PM	#19
digitalwanderer Colour Commentator Join Date: May 2002 Location: Highland, IN USA Posts: 5,620 Rep Power: 0	The bug has been around... ...for a long time, ever since the f-ing windows key came out. I don't think it's a 'bug' per se, I think the card just has a hard time jumping between modes like that. I had that 'bug' with my Xpert98, Rage Fury (non-Pro), radeon, GF2 MX400, and GF3 to various extents. The more advanced the card the less likely it'll crash, but they all hang sometimes in 98 with that. (Unlike XP which not only gives your pc improved stability, it also gives your PC the ability to walk on water! It's true, just look at the loyal following it provokes! ) __________________ WTF is up with the sigs?

Jun 2, 2002, 08:22 PM	#22
AT_curiousB DriverHeaven Lover Join Date: May 2002 Location: England Posts: 128 Rep Power: 0	Ahh Well I can only speak from experience. As some of yiou know I posted some time back about how to change from a dual boot system, Win ME and Win XP, to a single system of XP. I followed Zardons advoice and reformatted the drives in NTFS, after having re-combined the partitions, and installed afresh XPpro. Did I have problems? yep, did I manage to solve them? yep by following the various pieces of advice and tips available here at Driver Heaven so my thanks to all who took the time to share their knowledge. I have also installed the new release of the Omega/Cyborg drivers, version b is it?, and all is well. I would recommend anyone, even DW to transfer to XP it is intuitive and helpful to complete novices like myself, once you have tamed the beast it is really cool. __________________ Bill

May 31, 2002, 12:27 AM	#2
Zardon DriverHeaven Founder Join Date: May 2002 Posts: 32,480 Rep Power: 177	well this is going to open a massive can of worms and has been discussed so many times now ..... I would opt always for XP pro if you can, or home in your case, its based on the NT code, like win 2k, with better driver support and stability (waits for the flames). DLLs are also handled in a much superior way ... if you want I can post more details about all this tomorrow, but its 1 am here and I need sleep. as for the 9x code, ie win 95,98,98se,millenium... it has its followers like digital wanderer, but I wouldnt touch it again, it was never good with memory or stability, and thankfully its history. XP is the way forward. and will continue to grow stronger as time moves on.

May 31, 2002, 07:50 AM	#4
Zardon DriverHeaven Founder Join Date: May 2002 Posts: 32,480 Rep Power: 177	A common source of problems in previous versions of windows is DLL hell, the irritating instability that results when poorly written applications replace crucial system flfiles with outdated or incorrect versions. Windows XP monitors these crucial system files, preserving the correct version of the system file while allowing the program you just installed to use its own DLL file. When Microsoft first released Windows NT, it came with support for three file systems: FAT, HPFS, and NTFS. Microsoft originally designed FAT for DOS, IBM introduced HPFS for OS/2, and Microsoft created NTFS for NT. NTFS is NT's native format, and NT supports the FAT and HPFS formats to provide migration paths from the other operating systems (although Microsoft didn't include support for HPFS in NT 4.0). Microsoft's implementation goal for NTFS was to overcome the limitations of the other two NT-compatible file systems and provide the advanced features that an enterprise-level operating system requires. For example, NTFS supports file and directory-granular security, whereas FAT and HPFS have no security capability. In addition, NTFS's allocation scheme can efficiently address huge disks—FAT and HPFS both are limited to disk sizes that are challenged by today's commodity hardware. Finally, of the three file systems, NTFS is the only one that's Unicode-enabled for international environments and has built-in data reliability features to prevent file and file system corruption if the system fails. In the late 1980s, Microsoft designed NTFS in parallel with the initial development of NT. After NTFS's basic infrastructure was in place and functional, Microsoft directed the NT programming team to use NTFS as the file system for its NT development systems. This arrangement created an effective feedback loop for the NTFS developers. Because NTFS was to be a new file system from the ground up, its design could incorporate features that would overcome the limitations of existing PC file systems and anticipate the demands of NT's enterprise users down the road. The most obvious way to focus attention on NTFS was to make it scale with ever-expanding disks. All Windows file systems divide a disk partition into logical allocation units known as clusters. The FAT file system uses 16-bit entries to reference clusters, so at most FAT can address 216 or 65,536 clusters. Clusters can vary in size according to the size of a disk, but large clusters result in internal fragmentation, or wasted space inside clusters. For example, if a file has only 250 bytes of data, it still requires an entire cluster of allocated disk space, which results in more than 15KB of wasted space on a disk with 16KB clusters. With only 65,536 clusters of addressing capability, a FAT drive with 1KB clusters can cover a 65MB disk. Today's 4GB or larger disks require FAT clusters of 64KB—a size that typically yields large amounts of wasted space. In contrast, NTFS references clusters with 64-bit addresses. Thus, even with 512-byte clusters, NTFS can map disks up to sizes that we won't likely see even in the next few decades. The developers of FAT and HPFS overlooked file system security, but NTFS uses the same security model as NT. Discretionary access control lists (DACLs) and system access control lists (SACLs), which control who can perform operations on a file and what events will trigger logging of actions performed on a file, are stored in their native NT form within NTFS. This approach makes managing NTFS security a natural fit with general NT security administration. The FAT file system uses the ASCII 8-bit character set in its file and directory name scheme. Employing the ASCII character set constrains FAT names to English (and some symbolic) characters. NT and NTFS both use the Unicode 16-bit character set for names. This attribute of NTFS lets NT users around the world manage their files using their native language. FAT's model of data stored within a file is a one-unit approach. In contrast, NTFS lets several data streams exist within a file. The NTFS unnamed data stream is equivalent to the traditional FAT view of file data, but NTFS named streams can refer to alternative units of data. The named-stream model has not come into widespread use on NTFS (there isn't even a Win32 programming API that can access this capability), but Services for Macintosh (SFM) relies on the named-stream model to transparently let Macintosh clients use named streams on NTFS network drives as they do on their native Hierarchical File System (HFS) drives. Finally, FAT has no provision for fault-tolerance. If a system crashes while you are creating or updating files and directories, FAT's on-disk structures can become inconsistent. This situation can result in the loss of the data being modified, as well as a general corruption of the drive and the loss of much of the disk's data. This risk is unnecessary and clearly unacceptable for NT's target market. NTFS has built-in transactional logging so that whenever a modification is about to take place, NTFS makes a note of the modification in a special log file. If the system crashes, NTFS can examine the log file and use it to restore the disk to a consistent state with minimal data loss. NTFS's command central is the Master File Table (MFT). The MFT is analogous to the FAT file system's file allocation table because the MFT maps all the files and directories on the drive, including NTFS's metadata files. The MFT is divided into discrete units known as records. In one or more MFT records, NTFS stores the metadata that describes a file or directory's characteristics (security settings and other attributes such as read-only or hidden) and its location on the disk. Surprisingly, the MFT is also a file that NTFS maps using records within the MFT. This structure lets the MFT grow and shrink, which makes the space NTFS uses for metadata efficiently track the amount of metadata that exists. NTFS internally identifies files and directories using the position in the MFT of the record describing the start of their metadata. The records are usually 1KB in size on an NTFS 4.0-formatted drive, but they can be larger. The $MFTMIRR file is another NTFS data-loss prevention measure. $MFTMIRR contains a copy of the first 16 records of the MFT, and NTFS stores the file in the middle of the disk (the MFT starts near the beginning of the disk). If NTFS has trouble reading the MFT, it refers to the duplicate. An NTFS disk's boot record (512 bytes of data at the beginning of the disk) contains entries that locate the position of the MFT and the MFT mirror. MFT-access performance plays a critical role in the overall performance of an NTFS drive, so NTFS takes a step to keep access fast. Because the MFT is a file on an NTFS drive, it can become fragmented as it grows and shrinks. This fragmentation results because NTFS cannot contiguously allocate the entire MFT in advance. When the MFT grows and other files use the clusters just beyond its end, the MFT must look elsewhere on the disk for available space, which causes discontinuous sequences of clusters in its file map. The fastest file access occurs when a sequential disk operation can read entire chunks of a file, but a fragmented MFT means that NTFS may require multiple disk operations to read a record, which can lead to lower performance. In an effort to prevent MFT fragmentation, NTFS makes a region of clusters around the MFT off-limits to other files and directories. This area, the MFT-Zone, increases the chance that the MFT will find contiguous clusters or at least keep its data close to other MFT data when it needs to grow. When the disk space outside the MFT-Zone becomes scarce, NTFS relaxes its restriction and clusters from the zone can be allocated for other uses. Thus, the MFT runs a higher risk of becoming fragmented on disks that are near capacity. Unfortunately, NTFS does not let defragmentation tools defragment the MFT.

May 31, 2002, 02:06 PM	#5
Vaporizer WTF Join Date: May 2002 Location: Sweden Posts: 174 Rep Power: 0	woho thanks im pasting this to a text file on my harddrive if you dont mind =)

Jun 1, 2002, 06:06 AM	Thread Starter #6
edperks HardwareHeaven Senior Member Join Date: May 2002 Location: Southern Illinois Posts: 780 Rep Power: 0 System Specs	Zardon, Thanks for the info, and the knowledge which took some time to type and compile much appreciated. Your forum is awesome. Thanks Again!

Jun 1, 2002, 06:33 AM	#7
Ijustwannaknow Driverheaven Senior Membe Join Date: May 2002 Posts: 241 Rep Power: 0	I like xp

Jun 1, 2002, 07:23 AM	#9
Ijustwannaknow Driverheaven Senior Membe Join Date: May 2002 Posts: 241 Rep Power: 0	i dont have any problems with xp

Jun 1, 2002, 10:39 AM	#10
Layden DriverHeaven Junior Member Join Date: May 2002 Location: Salisbury, England Posts: 53 Rep Power: 0	Depends on your system. If you've got an older machine and you're mainly playing games than I'd stick with Win98. Been running it on my machine for 2 and a half years and have never had to reformat or re-install. All this stuff about it being totally unstable is crap. It's fast for games and that's what matters to me. Although if you've got a beefy system then I suppose XP isn't going to be quite as slothful as it is on some machines.

Jun 1, 2002, 04:22 PM	#11
Ijustwannaknow Driverheaven Senior Membe Join Date: May 2002 Posts: 241 Rep Power: 0	i use xp with a 1ghz 512ddram system no problems all my games play fine.

Jun 2, 2002, 09:52 AM	#16
Zardon DriverHeaven Founder Join Date: May 2002 Posts: 32,480 Rep Power: 177	some day digitalwanderer will join the rest of us in the year 2002, I could type alot more of the advances of winXP, but some people just like to keep their eyes shut I used 9x for 5 years, and it was ALWAYS an awful operating system. the memory management and kernel are just pathetic. it should never have been released. some tips for XP users here http://www.hardwareheaven.com/thread.php?id=1212

Jun 2, 2002, 08:57 PM	#23
Layden DriverHeaven Junior Member Join Date: May 2002 Location: Salisbury, England Posts: 53 Rep Power: 0	I will never succumb to the evil XP Well, not until I get something better than my P3-600 anyway. I've heard that it aint worth running XP on something like that as it is quite power mad.

Jun 2, 2002, 11:27 PM	#25
Spigot ph34r the l33t ducky Join Date: May 2002 Location: It's worth the drive to Acton! Posts: 116 Rep Power: 0	Tsk tsk... And I thought you guys knew all there was to know about everything... Windows, in all its incarnations, is completely bug-free. Really! There are no bugs in Windows. Just undocumented 'features'... hee hee. That said, I was a loyal 98SE user for a few years until last fall when I got XP Home. Since then, the only issue I had with XP was when I got my new Geforce 4 and XP decided that 'THERE SHALT BE NO IRQ LESS THAN 14' (and my card required IRQ 11)... Other than that, and the occasional incompatibility with REALLY old games (but surprisingly little of that too), I have nothing but high praise for XP. Well, it does seem to speed my clock to relativistic speeds occasionally too. http://www.hardwareheaven.com/thread.php?id=1207 Other than THAT... No probs, and this is with running it on a P3 500MHz system and a P4 1.6 GHz one. Just takes some getting used to the new layout (though you can tweak it to your heart's content). I do like the built-in burning software and the MP3 to CD Audio conversion software that's in WMP... sure, I could d/l other stuff off the net, but sometimes I'm just lazy. __________________ In Canada, we take "An Army Of One" literally.

Jun 3, 2002, 07:55 PM	#27
douver Guest Posts: n/a	i went from 98 to XP about 6 months ago last week i got sick of having to reinstall it every 2-4weeks different things just kept happening to it format back to fat32 98 it up again i cant believe how fast some things are after using XP /me will stay with 98 till the bitter end when M$ stops supporting it imho if u want your comp on 24/7 use XP if u turn your computer off at night 98 is still better

Jun 3, 2002, 11:41 PM	Thread Starter #29
edperks HardwareHeaven Senior Member Join Date: May 2002 Location: Southern Illinois Posts: 780 Rep Power: 0 System Specs	The only major problem i have had with XP is my Hercules Game Theatre Sound Card just will not work right in my system. I had to put the Soundblaster Live Platium back in and everything running great again. I also love the restore feature in XP