Vfat or NTFS?

[Russell Gadd <russ.mail.lists@googlemail.com>]

I've been using Vfat for data partitions which I can access from both Linux and Windows (multibooted). Recently I added another hard drive formatted NTFS and have had no trouble getting Lenny to use it.

I am wondering now whether to convert my Vfat partitions to NTFS as there are some advantages. For example I recently forgot about the 4GB file restriction of Vfat when trying to download a DVD iso - it got to 4GB then gave up so I had to redownload again to the NTFS volume. I suspect NTFS is more reliable at least in Windows. Are there any potential issues in Linux - e.g. reliability / speed.

Should I go NTFS now for my data files? (keeping the main Lenny root filesystem on an ext3 partition).