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| Thread ID: 119075 | 2011-07-03 22:38:00 | Which is best for a thumb/pen drive - NTFS or FAT 32? | tuiruru (12277) | Press F1 |
| Post ID | Timestamp | Content | User | ||
| 1214459 | 2011-07-03 22:38:00 | ......and the reasons for that are? :thanks |
tuiruru (12277) | ||
| 1214460 | 2011-07-03 22:42:00 | Depends what youre going to do with it. NTFS will work, but on some systems if you want to make it a bootable USB flash drive, (some / or probably all) dont support booting from an NTFS formatted USB flash drive. But you have to make sure you plug it into a USB port / system that supports NTFS. Not all (windows) O/s support NTFS The only thing with FAT32 is, if the file youre copying to it, is over 4 GB (if the USB flash drive is 8 -16 GB), you cant. Since, FAT32 has a 4 GB file limit |
Speedy Gonzales (78) | ||
| 1214461 | 2011-07-03 22:47:00 | NTFS is a better system in general but it depends on usage. They often come preformatted FAT 32 because it's more universally compatible but I think it still has a maximum file size restriction that can be an issue if you transfer very large files. I'd use FAT32 on small drives < 2G and NTFS on anything larger myself. Reasons: FAT 32 is a little faster and works on more OS's NTFS is more efficient (wastes less space on large drives) and fault tolerant. Also allows larger file sizes (I think) Edit: speedy confirmed my file size comments while I was typing :) |
dugimodo (138) | ||
| 1214462 | 2011-07-03 22:47:00 | Depends what youre going to do with it. NTFS will work, but on some systems if you want to make it a bootable USB flash drive, it wont boot from an NTFS formatted USB flash drive. \ But you have to make sure you plug it into a USB port / system that supports NTFS. Not all (windows) O/s's support NTFS The only thing with FAT32 is, if the file youre copying to it, is over 4 GB (if the USB flash drive is 8 -16 GB), you cant. Since, FAT32 has a 4 GB file limit Yeah - it's for a bootable USB, and I kew there was a File size limit kicking around somewhere. Thanks Speedy!! :thumbs: |
tuiruru (12277) | ||
| 1214463 | 2011-07-03 22:48:00 | NTFS is a better system in general but it depends on usage. They often come preformatted FAT 32 because it's more universally compatible but I think it still has a maximum file size restriction that can be an issue if you transfer very large files. I'd use FAT32 on small drives < 2G and NTFS on anything larger myself. Reasons: FAT 32 is a little faster and works on more OS's NTFS is more efficient (wastes less space on large drives) and fault tolerant. Also allows larger file sizes (I think) Thanks Dugi! |
tuiruru (12277) | ||
| 1214464 | 2011-07-03 22:49:00 | edit, speedy beat me to it. 4gb file size limit on fat32. | gretag34 (16372) | ||
| 1214465 | 2011-07-04 03:05:00 | I need to share pen drives with Windows machines so I don't use a Linux format - either FAT32 or NTFS (much more reliable than FAT32). Has anybody tried the relatively new extFAT (FAT64) for their pen drives? |
johnd (85) | ||
| 1214466 | 2011-07-04 03:26:00 | Exfat by the looks of it, would remove the 4 GB file limit. However (like NTFS), some (or probably all) USB flash drives, wont boot if you format it in Exfat. I'll try formatting this USB flash drive in Exfat, and see what happens |
Speedy Gonzales (78) | ||
| 1214467 | 2011-07-04 03:34:00 | I have found that OSX Leopard can't write to ExFat. Not sure about Snow Leopard, I'm sure I read somewhere it was supposed to be able to. I use NTFS for my drives, but am still using FAT32 for anything that needs to be used on Macs and PCs. ExFat would be better, but, at least on the one Leopard mac I've tried, it couldn't write. Does anyone know for sure what OSX Leopard and later can and can't write to? It is a bit of a pain having a 1TB drive formatted in FAT32. |
wratterus (105) | ||
| 1214468 | 2011-07-04 03:38:00 | According to this en.wikipedia.org Mac OS X Snow Leopard (en.wikipedia.org) added exFAT support in version 10.6.5 on November 10, 2010.[11] (en.wikipedia.org) OS X 10.6.5 and later can read, write, and create exFAT partitions. And An experimental, open source Linux kernel module that supports the reading of exFAT files is currently under development.[6] (en.wikipedia.org) A FUSE (en.wikipedia.org)-based full-featured implementation is currently in beta status.[7] (en.wikipedia.org) A proprietary, read/write solution, licensed and derived from the Microsoft exFAT implementation, is available for Android, Linux and other operating systems from Tuxera (en.wikipedia.org). |
Speedy Gonzales (78) | ||
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