Like some other things I've done to rattle the cage of my Windows XP machine, the change to NTFS happened on a whim.  I'm an old hand at tweaking out of boredom.  I'll switch back sooner or later, though it will mean a reformat.  Well boo freakin hoo, right?  Who asked for trouble ??

After the deed had been done, I began to appreciate the drawbacks of the changeover where this user is concerned:

1) No more virus scans outside of XP with F-Prot Antivirus for DOS.  Reason?  It's in #6.

2) No more F-Prot scans within XP either.  There are files that F-Prot just won't 'see' anymore, such as things I download from the net and try to scan.  The difference between the way F-Prot worked before and now, is NTFS-- the only change that happened in the meantime.  I'm making do with a couple of other antivirus programs.

3) More a puzzle than a problem... the System Volume Information folder now refuses to be deleted, though System Restore is totally disabled.

4) One of my applications somehow forgot that I'd registered it, and insisted I do it again.  Re-registering was easy.  I only wish I knew why it happened.

5) XP starts and restarts take longer now.  Neither are slower by a lot, but it's noticable.

6) No more ability to restore Registry backups from outside of XP using ERUNT, a move that requires direct access to a FAT or FAT32-based hard disk from a bootable floppy diskette that is also FAT based.  You might think of it as MS-DOS mode from previous versions of Windows.  Then forget it!--  No-can-do with NTFS, no way I know of at least.

...later on...

Ok, I take back #5.  After a scandisk and a defrag, the boot time seems to be back where it was before.

...later still...

I've definitely dropped  F-Prot Antivirus for DOS, now using AVG Free Edition and AVERT Stinger, eliminating one major reason I stayed with FAT32 this long.  I'm happy with AVG, though it has slowed things down.

Some things I collected:
    - FAT & NTFS File Systems in Windows XP (Windows Support Center)
    - FAT32 or NTFS: Making the Choice (The Elder Geek)
    - Increase XP NTFS performance (Tech Republic)