- The Big Picture—Planning Your Windows 2000 Network
- Don't Go Soft on Server Hardware
- You Can't Do Your Nails with This File (System)
- License, Please!
- The Least You Need to Know
You Can't Do Your Nails with This File (System)
You also need to decide on the file system that you will use on your server. Windows 2000 Server supports FAT, FAT32, and NTFS volumes, which are as follows:
FAT FAT volumes use a file allocation table that provides the name of the file and the location of the actual clusters that make up the file on the hard drive. FAT is a holdover from the days of DOS. If you want to run an operating system on the server other than Windows 2000 (such as a dual-boot with DOS), you must format your boot drive as FAT. FAT is limited, however, and doesn't supply some of the bells and whistles that you can get with NTFS volumes (such as file encryption or compression).
FAT32 FAT32 is an extension of the FAT file system. It uses disk space on a drive more efficiently than FAT and was designed for Windows 95/98.
NTFS The NTFS 5 is the file system designed for Windows 2000. It provides increased security for files on NTFS volumes and supports file system recovery. Microsoft recommends that you use NTFS as your file system on your Windows 2000 Servers.
I tend to go with the Microsoft recommendation. NTFS provides its own permissions system (allowing you to really lock down file access on the network). It's required on volumes that you want to audit for user file access (check out Chapter 9, "Everyone into the Pool, It's Group Policy," for information on auditing file access). And because you really shouldn't be running any operating system on your server other than Windows 2000, you don't need to format your drives with FAT or FAT32.
So, unless you have some unusual need to use FAT or FAT32, let Windows 2000 convert your boot drive to NTFS during the Windows 2000 installation. Then after your server is up and running, you can use the Computer Management snap-in (discussed in Chapter 15, "Making Hard Drives and RAID Easy Work") to set up all your drives as NTFS volumes.