May be this is not the right forum... it could be the off topic but...
if I right click on my Pdrive on WinXP and choose "Format", I have only 2 options... FAT and FAT32... I want to use FAT32 (current is format is FAT), but it only give me 979Mb, can I change that using command lines? I mean, it is supposed that with FAT32 I get more space, and I'm getting less, so how can I change it...
What is the command line (and command line options) to format my usb PDrive to FAT32?
Thanks in advance
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A 1GB drive isn't really a 1GB drive. You'll notice a little asterisk* and then a note at the bottom redefining a GB as 1,000,000,000 bytes (what the storage industry uses) while Windows and nearly every other OS on the planet uses 1,073,741,824 (2^30) as a GB. So, you'll never see a 1GB drive show up as 1GB formatted.
Add to that the fact that all file systems also have some overhead (space that's taken up by the file system itself and not available to you). So, a 1GB drive gets formatted to about 980MB.
Make sense now?
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
Currently, in FAT it says that have 985 Mb, but with formating to FAT32 goes to 979 Mb so I'm loosing space...
I was thinking in formating to FAT32 after a read all those post about which format is better... and I'm not thinking in NTFS because, being portable, you never knows which system you'll need to use your PDrive...
------------------
If a packet hits a pocket on a socket on a port,
and the bus is interrupted as a very last resort,
and the address of the memory makes your floppy disk abort,
then the socket packet pocket has an error to report
If a packet hits a pocket on a socket on a port,
and the bus is interrupted as a very last resort,
and the address of the memory makes your floppy disk abort,
then the socket packet pocket has an error to report
You can check out my comments to an earlier post here:
https://portableapps.com/node/8381#comment-44038
You can't compare FAT vs. FAT32 with no files on your stick. What you need to do is load it up first with the PortableApps Standard Edition and record how much space you have available. Then format with FAT32 and load up again with the Standard Edition. You will find that you have much more space available with a FAT32 formated disk/stick.
The reason for this is that FAT stores files in 16K chunks (if I remember correctly), while FAT32 stores each file in much smaller "chunks" (can't remember the exact number). So... if you have a lot of files, particularly small files, the "savings" between the two formats really adds up. The more files you put on the disk, the more space you save versus FAT.
Hope this clarifies things for ya.
-IP
Thank you very much by your explanation IrishPrince... then I'm going to format to FAT32...
------------------
If a packet hits a pocket on a socket on a port,
and the bus is interrupted as a very last resort,
and the address of the memory makes your floppy disk abort,
then the socket packet pocket has an error to report
If a packet hits a pocket on a socket on a port,
and the bus is interrupted as a very last resort,
and the address of the memory makes your floppy disk abort,
then the socket packet pocket has an error to report
You're welcome. Just a final note to drive home the point. With a FAT formated drive, if you created a text file with just the words, "Hello World" and nothing else in the file. It would take 16K of physical disk storage on the drive (32K on drives that are 1 - 2 GB in size). Since FAT32 saves data in 4K chunks, your small "Hello World" file would give you an extra 28K (32K - 4K) of storage space on a 2 GB memory stick. With hundreds or thousands of files, the amount of disk space savings can become quite large.
Microsoft has a good page explaining the pro's and con's on this page:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/windows2000serv/reskit/core...
-IP
You can use the HP USB Format Tool.
----
"Pray as if everything depended upon God and work as if everything depended upon man."
Francis Cardinal Spell
-Please search before posting.
"Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning." - Rick Cook
I've used the hp usb format tool, and I haven't noticed much (if any) difference in the amount of available space.
But it is a useful tool to convert a drive to ntfs, or to make the drive bootable.
I mean, you can format it in NTFS also (you said when you right-clicked, all you could do is FAT or FAT32). I've had significantly better performance with NTFS, so, unless you are going to be using your drive on Windows 9x or Linux without NTFS-3G, you should go with NTFS.
----
"Pray as if everything depended upon God and work as if everything depended upon man."
Francis Cardinal Spell
-Please search before posting.
"Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning." - Rick Cook
u should consider reading this topic before formatting ur usb https://portableapps.com/node/8381 it'll giv u some information of the pros and cons of the file systems
_________________________
"A $5000 Computer... and it can't do a task as simple as killing Flanders!" -Homer
_________________________
"A $5000 Computer... and it can't do a task as simple as killing Flanders!" -Homer
I read it... that's why I considered to format my PDrive to FAT32
------------------
If a packet hits a pocket on a socket on a port,
and the bus is interrupted as a very last resort,
and the address of the memory makes your floppy disk abort,
then the socket packet pocket has an error to report
If a packet hits a pocket on a socket on a port,
and the bus is interrupted as a very last resort,
and the address of the memory makes your floppy disk abort,
then the socket packet pocket has an error to report