Digital Home Thoughts: What Is The Best File System For Your SSD Devices?

"SSDs serve up data quickly, and prices are low enough that some enthusiasts may want SSDs for data storage. Does the file system you use matter? We compare performance between FAT32, NTFS, and the newer exFAT file systems on two popular SSD architectures."

The folks over at Tom's Hardware are known for their in-depth and credible technology reviews and opinions. In the linked piece (hit the Read link below), they tackle a very interesting question regarding which file system is best for SSD devices. Solid State Devices have some attractive properties, including small size, robustness, performance, and noise level (which is very low). They have steadily gained acceptance and profile over the past several years as their use has expanded, and as their prices have come down. Suffice it to say that most people would now own a number of devices with SSDs inside them.

There is a huge number of SSD devices in the marketplace for a wide variety of applications, so comparing them requires some filtering of purpose. In this instance Tom's Hardware decided to focus on those SSDs relevant for Windows users with flash-based storage devices. Specifically, they focus on a comparison of the performance of NTFS, exFAT, and the older FAT32 file systems. Their review is very comprehensive, and includes background explanations of some historic systems and terms. If you are interested in optimal performance for your flash-based storage devices, this is a very good read.