Different Partition format
 

Hi guys,,,
Right now i m using Gparted and its showing me three partitions, what does fat16, ntfs and ext3 mean. What does each of them stand for and how to use them, if u could help me out i would really appreciate
Thank you:study:

Don't know much about it, but here's some links...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat16

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTFS

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ext3

Good luck.

Fat16 is the "old" FAT (File Allocation Table) system used by MS DOS and is readable and writeable by Linux.

NTFS is the Windows specific (NT File System) which is generally only readable by Linux. There are some projects out there that may let you write to an NTFS file system, but since you're posting to Linux Newbie, I assume that getting one of those projects to work might be a little difficult. NTFS is OK if you just want to read the disk from Linux but not write to it.

EXT3 is a very standard/typical Linux file system. There are various schools of thought out there, but I would recommend using EXT3 as your Linux file system unless you have some compelling reason to use another one.

Short answer: FAT16 and EXT3 = Good in Linux. NTFS = Bad in Linux.

Welcome to LinuxQuestions.
In a nutshell a filesystem is how an operating system is able to access, read, write and organize information on a hard drive. There are many filesystems and you can find lots of information by googling. A disk drive has its own structure known as partitions. A table on the hard drive defines this structure in order for the OS to find a filesystem.