What is NTFS and FAT?

What is NTFS and FAT exactly? For the most Windows XP user NTFS is the obvious choice. It is more powerful and offers security advantage not found in other file systems. So, lets take a look the difference among the file systems so that we have a clear knowledge regarding the available file systems. Basically there are three different file systems available in Windows XP - FAT16, FAT32 stands for File Allocation Table and NTFS stands for New Technology File System.

FAT16

• was introduced with MS-DOS in 1981.
• originally designed to handle files in floppy drive - undergone minor modifications to handle hard disks.
• biggest advantage of FAT16 compatible with wide variety of OS such as Windows 95/98/ME, OS/2, Linux and certain versions of UNIX.
• disadvantages of FAT16 is it has a fixed maximum number of clusters per partition - which means when the hard disk capacity get bigger and bigger so does the each clusters.
• doesn't support compression, encryption or advanced security.

FAT32

• introduced in Windows 95 Service 2 - just an extension of the original FAT16 file systems.
  
• greatly improved in disk utilization when compared to a FAT16 file systems.

NTFS

• introduced with first version of Windows NT - completely different from FAT file systems.
  
• provides file by file compression, quotas, increased security and even encryption.
• you can convert to FAT16 and FAT32 to NTFS but, you can do it vice versa.

Look more in Wikipedia/FAT and Wikipedia/NTFS.