Formatting the Virtual Drives


For Windows operating system, there is not any difference between the BestCrypt virtual drives and other regular drives in the system. All disk utilities work with the virtual drives in the same way as they work with regular drives. The drive must be formatted using some file system recognized by Windows. Currently there are three file systems supported in Windows 95/98/ME (FAT12, FAT16 and FAT32), three file systems supported in Windows NT (FAT12, FAT16 and NTFS), and four file systems supported in Windows 2000/XP/Vista (FAT12, FAT16, FAT32, and NTFS).

To allow user to choose the file system for BestCrypt virtual drive, use standard Format operation available in the Windows operating system.

When you create new BestCrypt container, you may choose the file system which is the most suitable for your needs. The following table may be helpful here:


File System DOS Windows 95/98/ME Windows NT/2000/XP/Vista Comments
FAT12 YES YES YES Windows 95/98/ME uses it automatically if disk size less than 32 Mbytes
FAT16 YES YES YES Windows 95/98/ME uses it automatically if disk size less than 512 Mbytes
FAT32 NO YES YES (except NT) FAT32 uses disk space more efficiently than FAT16 if the disk size is larger than 512 Mbytes (FAT32 is as effective as FAT16 if disk size is more than 256 MB and less than 512 MB.)
NTFS NO NO YES Reliable file system designed specially for Windows NT/2000/XP/Vista


BestCrypt asks user to choose the file system for new file-container in the following cases:


  1. In the Windows NT operating system, when the standard system Format dialog window appears (the File System drop down list), the user may choose the FAT or NTFS file system.
  2. In the Windows 2000/XP/Vista operating system, when standard system Format dialog window appears (the File System drop down list), the user may choose FAT, FAT32 or NTFS file system.
  3. In the Windows 95/98/ME operating system, when the user creates a file-container larger than 256 Mbytes, the user may choose the DOS compatible FAT16 or the more effective FAT32 file system, and BestCrypt will show the following window:


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  4. In the Windows 95/98/ME BestCrypt allows creation of file-containers up to 4 GBytes. But FAT16 file system is not supported on disks larger than 2 GBytes. So, if a file-container larger than 2 GBytes is created in Windows 95/98/ME, BestCrypt warns user that the file-container may be formatted with FAT32 file system only:


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