Outside of authentication, the most common way to secure the contents of your Web site is through the use of permissions. As you learned earlier, the Home Directory tab in the properties of a Web site includes a section with 4 permissions listed: Script source access, Read, Write, and Directory browsing. By default, only the […]

Windows XP supports three different file systems – FAT, FAT32, and NTFS. Although the FAT32 file system is a reasonable and well-performing file system for large partitions, it does lack one key feature, namely security. In order to be able to secure files and folders with security permissions (as well as use features like file […]

Also known as “allocation units”, clusters are essentially units of disk space as defined by a file system like FAT32 or NTFS during the partition formatting process. When files are saved to disk, they are stored in as many clusters as necessary to save the complete file. For example, if an NTFS partition is configured […]

Once a disk partition is defined, it needs to be formatted with a file system to be used. Depending on the operating system installed, your choices include FAT, FAT32, and NTFS. For all intents and purposes, stick to FAT 32 if you’re running Windows 98/ME, and NTFS if you’re running XP. The old FAT file […]

If you’re running Windows XP Home, the Simple File Sharing is enabled by default, and unlike in Windows XP Professional, there is no easy way to turn it off. While some users will find this version of file sharing simple to use, it does lack much of the granularity typically associated with assigning NTFS and […]

If you choose to apply both shared folder and NTFS permissions to a folder, you need to consider which permissions will actually apply. For example, let’s say that you granted a user named Paul the shared folder permission Read, and the NTFS permission Full Control. When accessing this folder over the network, the more restrictive […]

Besides increased system stability, the best reason for choosing Windows XP or Windows 2000 as a desktop OS is the ability to take advantage of the NTFS file system. Unlike FAT and FAT32, NTFS provides the ability to configure file and folder security permissions that apply to both local and remote users. On a Windows […]