NTFS

The NTFS file system is the recommended file system for use with Windows 2000. NTFS has all of the basic capabilities of FAT, and it provides the following advantages over the FAT and FAT 32 file systems:

Better file security.
Better disk compression.
Support for large hard disks, up to 2 terabytes (TB). (The maximum drive size for NTFS is much greater than that for FAT, and as drive size increases, performance with NTFS doesn't degrade as it does with FAT.)

If you're using a dual-boot configuration (using both Windows 2000 and another operating system on the same computer), you may not be able to gain access to files on NTFS partitions from the other operating system on your computer. For this reason, you should probably use FAT32 or FAT if you want a dual-boot configuration.

For more information about dual booting, see Dual-Boot Configuration, later in this chapter.