What do most ppl have as their file system on their USB? And which one is better. I read that Fat is good because it safely ejects better or something.
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Hopefully this information will help.
From : http://homepage.ntlworld.com/allcam/hddformat.html
FAT or FAT16 file system
FAT stands for "File Allocation Table", FAT and FAT16 are the same. This was widely used during the Under DOS and early versions of Windows 95 era when the hard drive capacity is generally small ( less than 2 GB). Floppy drive is always formatted in this format.
The good thing with FAT is that the data stored under this format is universally readable by any Windows PC, no matter it is DOS, Windows 2000, or Windows XP.
FAT32 file system
As the hard drive capacity goes beyond 2 GB, FAT32 was introduced in rush to allow for larger partitions and less waste, however Microsoft did not have enough foresight for fast development of storage technology, the partition size is still limited to 32 GB. (Note from Jacoby: Nowadays this limit is gone, and FAT32 partitions can exceed this. I think, though, that Windows still enforces this by default. I know Norton Partition Magic can make larger ones, as can other utilities.)
FAT32 is mainly used in Windows 98 and Windows ME, but also supported by Windows 2000 and Windows XP.
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Posted in Mozilla PowerSkunk. Other Browsers run in fear!
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Windows 98, 98SE, and Me (...and 2000, I think) can format partitions larger than 32 GB with FAT32. The only reason XP imposes this limit, I believe, is to coax people into using NTFS.
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fatcerberus@yahoo.com [aim: fatcerberus]
I have no witty remarks or quotes to share at the moment.
I use FAT32 instead of FAT16 (or just FAT) as it does better with cluster use and gives me more space, yet is still compatible across a lot of systems, which is why I don't use NTFS on it.
Thank you, Bruce, it's been quite a while since I've had 98se. I never tried with 2k. Heck, when I had 98 it was when I had a 30GB hard drive (and a couple smaller).
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Posted in Mozilla PowerSkunk. Other Browsers run in fear!
(Brought to you by Firesomething.)
You were lucky. Back in the Windows 95/98 era, I was using hard drives no larger than 1 GB. Back then, Windows would actually fit on such a small hard drive.
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fatcerberus@yahoo.com [aim: fatcerberus]
I have no witty remarks or quotes to share at the moment.
NTFS for everything, but on a USB stick say between 1 -2 Gb in size would this be the best option, or would FAT32 offer any advantages (any PC I use is unlikely to have anything on it other than XP or maybe W2K)
NTFS is generally a good idea if the drive in question is not an iPod and you only plan on using it with Windows 2000 or Windows XP systems. If an NTFS drive gets pulled in the middle of a write, you won't corrupt the entire file system, since thanks to NTFS' logging, a file is either completely written or not written at all. There's no in-between. FAT-based file systems don't offer this kind of protection.
By the way, write caching has to be turned on for a drive before you can format it with NTFS (right-click drive -> properties -> hardware tab -> double-click device name -> policies tab -> optimize for performance).
Note that, contrary to popular belief, you can format small (e.g. 128 MB) drives with NTFS. It's not just for large disks.
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fatcerberus@yahoo.com [aim: fatcerberus]
I have no witty remarks or quotes to share at the moment.
Great thanks for everyones feedback. Basically as i understand it;
• Fat16 is fine, but basically it uses more space
• Fat32 is good to use as long as i'm only using windows 98 and up
• NTFS is probably the best as long as i'm using windows 2000 up
Correct me if i'm wrong but NTFS file system is not compatiable with OSX. I plan on using the USB on a dual bood MacBook and would like to be able to use it on both OS's.
..i just converted to NTFS, and alreay i see a boost in performance. In the past my firefox bookmarks were slow as to move or even rename, but now they are back to how they were when i had a local version.
My iPOD Video 30GB is formatted with FAT32 and it works quite nicely.
Rob Loach [Website] [Projects] [Blog]
FAT32 is the default file system for Windows-formatted iPods. I don't see why it wouldn't work.
Don't try formatting an iPod with NTFS, though. iTunes won't realize there's a problem and will load the songs onto an NTFS iPod without issue, but none of the music will show up on the iPod's menu and the device won't even remember your settings correctly (since it doesn't know what to make of the file system and thus can't read or write to it). Formatting an iPod with NTFS actually gives you a good excuse to take it back to the store within the 90-day period if you decide you're not happy with the color: it causes a very reproducible problem, and the store generally won't know what to make of it. I did that once.
I know, I'm evil, aren't I?
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fatcerberus@yahoo.com [aim: fatcerberus]
I have no witty remarks or quotes to share at the moment.
You think that's evil?
Today I bought a new game for my PSP but found they had packed the wrong disk into the pack. So, naturally I took the disk out, kept it and took the pack back and said they hadn't packed a disk in.
I am evil.
I want to be more evil.
I want to be more evil now.
AND GODDAMN IT, I WANT MY EGGS SCRAMBLED NOT FRIED!
(Hmm, good motto for PortaBlog...)
----
R McCue
PortaBlog Home and My Website
PortaBlog is now officially out of beta!
"If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate."
We're all a bunch of evil bastards, I guess.
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fatcerberus@yahoo.com [aim: fatcerberus]
I have no witty remarks or quotes to share at the moment.
I'm :evil:
----
R McCue
PortaBlog Home and My Website
PortaBlog is now officially out of beta!
"If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate."
"I didn't go to four years of evil medical school to be called Mr. Evil."
I only use my USB drive (6gb WD pocket drive) on Windows XP systems. Currently I have it formatted to FAT32. What exactly would I gain by formatting it to NTFS?
Thanks,
Timothy
AIM: TimothyDMB
http://www.mollyandtim.com/
Timothy
NTFS performs better for one thing. Plus, if the drive is ever pulled in the middle of a write (or a power failure occurs), you won't hose your drive. Thanks to the NTFS log, a file operation is either completed or it doesn't happen it all. FAT32 doesn't offer this protection.
NTFS also offers transparent native compression. If you want to compress a file, right-click it and hit Properties, then click on Advanced and turn compression on. You can still use the file as usual, even while it's compressed. Don't try using NTFS encryption on a flash drive though--the encryption key is tied to the local user account, so you'd only be able to open the file from the same computer and user account that it was encrypted on.
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fatcerberus@yahoo.com [aim: fatcerberus]
I have no witty remarks or quotes to share at the moment.
Did you think of the NTFS permissions ?
If you give (full control or read/write) permissions to only specific users/groups, then you might get into trouble running your apps on a different machine, where these users/groups don't exist and you're not logged in with an admin account.
When the current user doesn't have write permissions, then your apps might fail to run correctly.
I think I've got a problem with some of my p-apps right now, caused by this circumstance. I use NTFS. I had to restore the complete content of my USB drive from an earlier backup. But for the restore copy process, I forgot using the option to copy the NTFS permissions together with the files. An _important_ thing to mention is that I did the restore process on a different machine and with a different (admin) user account than the user the p-apps are usually running under!
After that restore process I tried to run some p-apps on the USB drive in the usual way, using the initial machine and user. But errors occured. Firefox was not able to write to some files. The reason, I think, were the missing NTFS permissions for the user/group, lost by not copying the NTFS permissions with the files !?
What do you all think about that ?
regards
Shufflebug
That's why I don't even touch the permissions on my NTFS-formatted flash drive. I've never had a problem accessing my files on other PCs, mainly because files are typically created with Full Control by default. And it should be noted that all my files were created on (and so are owned by) an administrator account.
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fatcerberus@yahoo.com [aim: fatcerberus]
I have no witty remarks or quotes to share at the moment.
the whole point of portable apps is so that you can use them in many different scenarios (different PC's and different user accounts etc) invoking permissions means that all that is going to happen is that you will limit your availability to use the apps.
Why again did you set permissions?
File encryption ala yadadisk or dscrypt would ensure security if that was your concern.
For me, I want to be able to use my flashdrive absolutely everywhere, so no weird permissions for me, that would really hack me off, if I went to the public library or something then found I couldn't even use the flashdrive.
Didn't I just get finished saying I didn't touch the permissions and that my files open just fine on a wide variety of computers? Maybe you ought to read more carefully from now on.
However, there are default permissions and a default owner (the user who created the file), which NTFS apply to any newly-created files. It's not an issue, though, because the default permissions include Full Control.
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fatcerberus@yahoo.com [aim: fatcerberus]
I have no witty remarks or quotes to share at the moment.
Bruce, go look again, I was refering to shufflebug not you...
Sorry, I got confused and thought you were Shufflebug.
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fatcerberus@yahoo.com [aim: fatcerberus]
I have no witty remarks or quotes to share at the moment.
Bruce,
First time I formated (or was it converted)my flash drive to NTFS, I was runninng on an admin-level account, and I put all my uni assignments, portable apps, etc on it using this account. I then went to uni later that day, and the uni machines are (naturally) running limited-user accounts. I was all to read all my files from the flash drive, was wasn't able to edit files on the flash drive, but I think I was able to write new files.
When I got home to my admin account, I changed the default permissions to Everyone -> Full Control, and everything was fine after that. Windows had by default allowed everyone to view the file system, but not modify it!
Incidently, if anyone is intrested, and I believe this has been mentioned before, you can run
from the commmand prompt to convert the file system of your flash drive to NTFS without formating or changing the policies for the drive. If you want to avoid the file/folder permissions problem mentioned above, add
(note to self: how did I miss that one before!?)
pfeerick
It wasn't my intension to set special permissions and I didn't set any.
See: http://house-verwaltung.de/images/_screenshots/default_permissions.JPG
This is what the permissions look like when you do a fresh NTFS format on a drive (logged into the system with admin account).
Create a test file on the USB drive.
After that you logout and login into the system again with a restricted user account. Try to delete or modifiy the test file. You are not permitted to do this operation.
Are you guys working under an admin account all the time ? For security reasons I do not.
techguyone, do you see now that it is possible to run into permisson trouble without explicitly setting/modifing any permissions ? Rather one had to modify in the ACL for the USB drive (root dir) the ACE for the group "Everyone" to _full control_/_apply to folder, subfolder and files_ to ensure that the USB drive can be used on different machines and with different (restricted) user accounts.
See: http://house-verwaltung.de/images/_screenshots/modified_permissions.JPG
Thanks for that, if I maanage to figure out how to format mine, I'll go into permissions and make everything read Full Control for everybody.
Do not format a flash drive as NTFS unless you know what the MFT is and understand the effects of fragmentation on the MFT as you fill the drive.
By default your Master File Table will not be large enough. It will grow as you fill the drive. It will fragment as you fill the drive. It will NOT shrink as you delete files from the drive. It will NOT Defragment as you delete files. You cannot Defragment the MFT unless you use special ($$$) utilities. In time you will have a very Fragmented MFT and will lose some of the benifits of using NFTS.
This is a problem on Hard Drives as well which is why you should NEVER fill up an NTFS Hard Drive. Most people would not usually let this happen. On my Flash drive, however, I fill it up all the time.
Tim
?:-)
Geek w/o portfolio
Things have got to get better, they can't get worse, or can they?
I just found that I can't open Thunderbird on some systems after I reformatted to NTFS. It's the one computer at work that I use most commonly. It will open Thunderbird but tells me that the security settings are wrong and I can't open any of my email inboxes or RSS feeds. I think I may just go back to Fat32 for ease of use.
Timothy
AIM: TimothyDMB
http://www.mollyandtim.com/
Timothy
I've read some comments saying that FAT32 gives more space. With my SanDisk CruzerMini 1GB drive, that is not true. FAT actually gives me more space. It could be because it's a flash drive instead of hard drive, or maybe because of the way SanDisk set it up. I cannot format to NTFS.
Vintage!
Yes you can. You just have to go through a ridiculous number of steps just to turn on one option before you can format a drive as NTFS through My Computer.
My Computer ->
right-click drive ->
Properties ->
Hardware tab ->
double-click device name (requires some guesswork) ->
Policies tab ->
Optimize for performance
You can avoid all that trouble, though. Just go to a command line and type:
convert X: /FS:NTFS /NoSecurity(where X is the drive letter of your USB key). It'll convert any FAT/FAT32 drive to NTFS. The NoSecurity switch grants all users write access to the drive, so you won't run into trouble on Limited/Guest-level accounts.
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fatcerberus@yahoo.com [aim: fatcerberus]
I have no witty remarks or quotes to share at the moment.
Perfect:
You can avoid all that trouble, though. Just go to a command line and type:
/FS:NTFS /NoSecurity
convert
That's just what I wanted, takes away all the aggrevation.
nice one Bruce.
Thanks. Will I get more space or better performance with NTFS?
Vintage!
MS claims better performance. I can't say how much better it will be, but in my experience, it seems to perform at least a little bit better than FAT and FAT32. Being a logged file system, it's also more resilient (its major advantage). If you accidentally pull the drive without using safe removal, you won't nuke the file system. The log ensures that a file operation is either completed or it doesn't happen it all.
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fatcerberus@yahoo.com [aim: fatcerberus]
I have no witty remarks or quotes to share at the moment.
My disk was formatted FAT by default, and it didn't occur to me to change it. I suppose that's the reason for the following?
Type: Folder
Size: 75.9 MB (79,636,377 bytes)
Size on Disk: 207 MB (217,333,760 bytes)
Contains: 9.488 Files, 392 Folders
It's not specific to FAT. The file system stores a stream of data (file) into an allocated space. The file's size determines how many slots of memory it gets (typically one slot is 4096 bytes). The slots it uses can't be used for any other files. If I have a file that uses 20 bytes, it will use 4096 bytes on the disk. It's a bit more complicated, though (a larger file's size may not be within 4096b of its size on disk).
Vintage!
I know, but FAT seems to have pretty large slots, because when I changed it to FAT32, the size on disk almost halved.
I changed to NTFS, and my size-size on disk ratio has improved quite a bit:
PortableFirefox Folder
Size: 71.8 MB (75,380,998 bytes)
Size on disk: 74.6 MB (78,258,176 bytes)
1204 files, 429 folders
note: I have been using PFx since my last size report, which explains the difference in data size.
BTW, this is very odd considering it's a format Microsoft has been pushing for its newer Windows, but the Xbox 360 does not support portable devices formatted with NTFS. FAT and FAT32 work fine.
Vintage!
NTFS is a pretty complex file system and the programming to support is hefty. MS may have chosen not to add support for it in the Xbox 360 for that reason. Usually only power users format their USB drives for NTFS (and rightfully so--the process just to enable it in the Format dialog is a royal pain), so I imagine it's not a priority. Plus, Microsoft only really pushes NTFS as a file system for "large drives" (i.e. internal hard drives)--I don't think they really intended many people to use it on portable devices.
Regarding the improvement in size to size-on-disk ratio... if I'm not mistaken, NTFS defaults to smaller cluster sizes on smaller drives. You may only have 512B or 1K clusters, explaining the efficiency. Note, however, that smaller clusters mean more file fragmentation. Unlikely you'll lose much performance on Flash media due to fragmentation, though.
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fatcerberus@yahoo.com [aim: fatcerberus]
I have no witty remarks or quotes to share at the moment.
When I changed from FAT to NTFS with convert, I noticed that the one folder I didn't delete (I had backed it up previously) was preserved. I thought that when changing file systems, the drive would have to be wiped in the process. Is this because there was enough free space to convert part of the drive, move data to converted areas, and continue, or can this be done with a full drive?
Vintage!
If the command were to wipe out the drive in the conversion process, it wouldn't be called a conversion, now would it? You may have been under the misconception that it was destructive because the most common way to change file systems is to format, which is a destructive operation.
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fatcerberus@yahoo.com [aim: fatcerberus]
I have no witty remarks or quotes to share at the moment.
I want to convert my primary HDD, but can i do it wile the os is running
No. For reasons I would imagine would be obvious, all files on the drive must be closed before you can convert to NTFS, which can't be done live since the operating system itself has to keep a lot of files open while it's running. Conversion of your primary Windows partition requires at least one reboot.
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fatcerberus@yahoo.com [aim: fatcerberus]
I have no witty remarks or quotes to share at the moment.
Perhaps copying convert.exe to an MS-DOS boot disk (if it's not included) would work. Simply boot to that floppy, and run convert C: /FS:NTFS.
Vintage!
thx, ill try it.
Diddent work said cant run in dos mode then i tried the ever-so-famus barte pe, wich condent convert fat32 then i tried repier in the setup and it did not have he command, so im lost
Don't mislead him. You can run Convert C: from an XP command prompt; it just needs to reboot before it starts running. Even if it were possible (which it's not) to run convert.exe from pure MS-DOS mode, why go to the trouble?
@Nerd
Just go to a command prompt and run
convert C: /fs:NTFSIt might reboot a few times before the process it complete, but it'll work. No need to do anything complicated like making MS-DOS boot disks and such.
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fatcerberus@yahoo.com [aim: fatcerberus]
I have no witty remarks or quotes to share at the moment.
thx, sounds good, ill try it
WWWWHHHHOOOO!!!!
YYYYEEEEHHHHAAAAA
Just secdueld it on next reboot... and it worked!!!! I LOVE YOU!!!!(Not ReLLY!)
[EDITED BY MODERATOR: Please don't use repetitive or all caps. It disrupts the flow of the forum and the page layouts]
convert.exe is a non-destructive command. However it is a good idea to alway backup your data before making any file system changes.
FAT32 Can Proccess 32 bits so its faster, but FAT only proccesses 16 bits
Ummmmmm OK. Lol
But 16 is half of 32, so shouldn't FAT16 (not FAT, which is 12) be faster?!
A smaller number of bits doesn't mean anything. The processor performs better when it's pushing around blocks of native word size (32 bits in the case of an x86). It's more inefficient otherwise.
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fatcerberus@yahoo.com [aim: fatcerberus]
I have no witty remarks or quotes to share at the moment.
No. If I can transport 32 of something at a time, I can do twice as much as if I could only transport 16.
Vintage!
The processor performs better when it's pushing around blocks of native word size (32 bits for an x86). Only moving 16 bits (or even 12, or 8) around at a time is more inefficient. It's like having a bus and putting 25 people on it, taking the bus to its destination and driving back again to pick up 25 more people, even though the bus can hold, say, 50 people.
@John T. Haller
Where'd my post about this go? Did you accidentally delete it when you edited Nerd's post?
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fatcerberus@yahoo.com [aim: fatcerberus]
I have no witty remarks or quotes to share at the moment.
This post?
32/16/12 bits is all moot (as far as processing speed goes) right now. We are talking about USB drives, the processor can deal with it as fast as the stick can give it! Wouldn't the only reason to worry about that right now be because of cluster size? FAT32 & NTFS are the best for that right now.
~Lurk~ Email
~Lurk~
Very interesting and technical discussion FAT, FAT32 and NTFS but nobody mentioned one very important detail: File size!
You can't write a file larger than 2Gb on FAT (which is ok because you can't have partitions larger than 2Gb under FAT), but the worst news is that you can't write a file larger than 4Gb under FAT32! That is the real advantage of NTFS! And this is particularly important for people using iPods or USB HDD. You may get a disk full message when trying to copy a file larger than 4Gb to your FAT32 device even if you know you have 20Gb available...
The negative part of NTFS is that (unless you use special drivers) you can't read (or sometimes you can read but not write) NTFS partitions with older OSs (e.g. Win98, older versions of Linux, etc)
Why aren't the new posts in this thread showing up? Something's very odd about this thread...
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fatcerberus@yahoo.com [aim: fatcerberus]
I have no witty remarks or quotes to share at the moment.
question, I was thinking the same thing
Yours
Steve Lamerton
The forum page doesn't link to the second page of the thread.
Vintage!