You may be wondering what NTFS and FAT32 are and what the benefits are over one another. Each just means how your hard drive will be formatted and how you will access your information. Let's get started by defining what each stand for.

NTFS stands for New Technology File System. Some of the benefits of NTFS over FAT32 include:

File Compression

Encrypted file system

Lager file limit over FAT32

Disk Quotas

Can read FAT32 partitions

FAT32 stands for File Allocation Table and the 32 stands for the 32 bit operating system.

Some of the limitations of FAT32 include:

Your hard drive can not be over 32GB in size (Most newer drives are)

You can not create files larger than 4GB. Most people will never create a file this large, but you never know.

FAT32 can not read NTFS partitions.

FAT32 will work with Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows NT and Windows XP.

You are going to see many more benefits with NTFS over FAT32. If your computer is already formatted with FAT32 then I would recommend leaving it this way, however if you are installing Windows fresh and have the option then you should choose NTFS.