should external drives be formatted in nts or fat 32,and why?

If you want to use it in Windows 98 environment you must format it as FAT32 cause Windows 98 doesn't support NTFS.

and if your choiced platform is only Windows XP, you should go for NTFS cause, it support better encription and compression.

Thanks.

Depends on the use. The most straight answer I can give you is this:

If you need security, or it is huge ( more than I'd say about 25GB) and will only be used on newer computers, (Microsoft Windows 2000 and newer) The use NTFS

If it's small ( a jump drive), or it needs to be versitile ( used on differerent computers), or if you don't know, use FAT

Note: I hope you are (because I am) talking about FAT32, no one has used FAT16 in years)

There is no universal correct answer to your question.

It depends on the individual situation.

NTFS has definite advantages over FAT32, however, it will not be recognized by older Windows operating systems.

For a truly useful answer please specify a hard disk or partition size(s) as well as the operating systems that would need to access the external drive.

regards,

Philip T