Fat 32 Rule

[johnbarry]

When I purchase USB Drives, let’s say 64GB Sandisk Ultra Fit USB 3.1 Flash Drive.

It’s default is Fat 32 format, going on the fat rule (upto 3ish GB I thought  I need to change to NTFS to get my folder (56GB) on.

I just had a new USB drive, default is fat32 (usually I re format to NTFS) I am putting a 56GB folder on and it’s still going.

I thought fat32 wouldn’t take the folder, or does it mean a single file no bigger than 3ish GB. Like my Paragon backup is split into 7, 5 are larger than 4GB in size, so is that too big for fat32. or wiil they go on a fat 32 USB.

Cheers
John

[blacklion1725]

I thought that FAT32 could only handle max 4GB for each file, but the overall capacity of the drive can be (much) higher. If you are saving OS backups on USB sticks – firstly I wouldn’t do it and secondly I I absolutely had to a single backup image to NTFS would be way more reliable? As always stand to be corrected. Itss has been mentioned before on here, full OS back-ups seem a little unnecessary now – as long as your data and settings are backed up. A windows install and update now is so quick that I only keep a full backup (using W7 Backup and Restore) on the local machine if I have loads of space (different disk), luckily not needed it for 5+ years). Anyway, rambling – think 4GB is max for an individual file.

[Dave Rice]

A lot of backup programs can be set to split the backups into smaller chunks. In EaseUs ToDo it’s customizable.

However the only reason I can see for using FAT32 is if you are going too use the drive in a device that doesn’t understand NTFS. If it’s only going into a Windows PC format it as NTFS.

[Wheels-Of-Fire]

Yep 4GB is the maximum FILE size for FAT32.

Extended FAT (exFAT) was specifically designed for flash drives by Microsoft, it includes some of the features of NTFS but leaves out the one’s that cause undesirable write patterns on a flash drive. What you don’t get is file change journaling but you only really NEED that on a drive that is running an OS.

What you do get is a disk cluster allocation bitmap that makes finding free space much faster and a maximum file size of 16 Exabytes !

[johnbarry]

Thanks Blacklion

Dave The drive come already formatted fat32.

Thanks Graham

Cheers
John

[Ed P]

At one time there was talk that M$ would drop NTFS in favour of exFat for disk drives as well as USB sticks. Apparently it is much more flexible and faster than NTFS and  although out of the box, exFat does not support journaling there are a bunch of unsupported optional extras including TexFat which is a transactional filing system.

[johnbarry]

Ed I always thought exfat to be worse than NTFS as x normally stands for old, however I have never used it, maybe I should try.

Cheers
John

[Ed P]

johnbarry wrote:

as x normally stands for old

Not sure where you got that impression, as all the Ad Agencies think X stands for eXcellent, eXtreme eXcel, XP, XR4i etc.

[Dave Rice]

It comes formatted with FAT32 as that is supported by almost all devices. However that doesn’t mean it’s the best format for what you want to do with it. If you’re using it for Windows PC backups then NTFS will be better.

[Ed P]

This link gives some reasons why certain USB formats are better than others for different jobs.

[Wheels-Of-Fire]

As you found that link Ed then then you probably also know that MS released the spec for exFAT publicly for the first time in August this year, they are still holding on to the patents and exFAT is not open source but they also signed it up to the patents non aggression pact so development is underway to incorporate it into the next Linux Kernel release.

[Wheels-Of-Fire]

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/storage/refs/refs-overview

ReFS was ment to be the next gen file system for Windows but they have had a LOT of trouble with it, so far it is only approved for use on server systems running hardware on an approved list.

NTFS still reigns supreme for running Windows from, and its looking like it will for the foreseeable future 😁.

exFAT is just ment for flash drives and to make it better for running an OS Windows CE has TexFAT.

Oh and when they published the specs they sneekily changed the meaning of the “e” from Extended to Extensible, which it now is since they published the specs !

[Wheels-Of-Fire]

If anyone is interested in knowing more about NTFS then the books Windows Internals parts 1 and 2 by MS press is a good place to look. I have the 6th edition in print but the text can be found online.

To save the trouble of wading through it the interesting bit starts on page 424 of book 2, titled ” NTFS Design Goals and Features”.

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