Should I use FAT or NTFS when using Windows XP as a KVM guest?

Question

I am installing 32-bit Windows XP as a KVM guest on CentOS 6.

Should I be using FAT or NTFS filesystem and why?

Answer 1

You should be using NTFS, unless you have a good reason not, such as a very old legacy application not supporting NTFS.

You can have a look at a feature set comparison here, but basically, NTFS has more features (including native file security options that FAT lacks), and there's just no reason to pick FAT over NTFS for an internal disk unless you have to.

Removable media may benefit from using FAT if it's to be shared between Windows and other OSes, but otherwise, NTFS is the superior choice.