Beginner questions regarding reformatting USB flash drive

[Karl Agathon]

Just bought a Patriot 16 Gb USB flash drive from newegg. At Patriiots webste, it says that if im looking for performance, formatting to NTFS wouldnt be a good idea. Unfortunately though, I have more then 4 GBs of music I want to transfer to the drive. I know one cant do that with FAT 32 (at least thats what ive read) Are most NTFS flash drives limited in this way? (not good performance) im using Windows XP SP3 if that means anything at all. Thanks for any info.

 

[Yellowbeard]

The FAT32 file size limits are for individual files, not overall data amount. Is there some reason you don't want to use NTFS?

 

[Karl Agathon]

The FAT32 file size limits are for individual files, not overall data amount. Is there some reason you don't want to use NTFS?

No specific reason. I just want to be able to transfer my itunes folder with all its contents onto it to the drive. The folder is about 7 GB.

 

[Yellowbeard]

Try it FAT32 if you want. If it fails for whatever reason, such as volume size, etc, then use NTFS. Or, if you prefer the K.I.S.S. principle, go ahead just go NTFS.

 

[kmmatney]

I would keep it at Fat32 - that will handle your itunes folder just fine. The only real reason to go with an NTFS format is if you need folder compression (which won't help you with music files).

 

[edro]

Fat32 is fine. As others have said, the limitation is on file size, not directory size.

http://www.ntfs.com/ntfs_vs_fat.htm

 

[Karl Agathon]

Hello again, thanks for taking the time to respond. Also wanted to say I made a mistake. The drives file system is just FAT not FAT32. Dont know if that makes any difference or changes anything?

 

[lsv]

Hello again, thanks for taking the time to respond. Also wanted to say I made a mistake. The drives file system is just FAT not FAT32. Dont know if that makes any difference or changes anything?

It's probably FAT32. I can't imagine any company formatting in FAT16 as default 🙂

 

[Karl Agathon]

It's probably FAT32. I can't imagine any company formatting in FAT16 as default 🙂

• Will my flash drive lose performance if I format it it to NTFS?

"Yes, fat the default file format, is the best suited file type in terms of performance for our USB Flash drives. If you are concerned about performance, we would not recommend to convert the file type to NTFS. We would only recommend this in converting larger files. (>4GB)"


^^^This is what was on their website. Regardless, ill try it as is and see how it goes. if it fails, ill just format to NTFS.

 

[Karl Agathon]

Wow it worked, everything seems to have transfered fine. I didnt format it. Music files are playing perfectly on my Roku. Just wanted to again thank everyone that took the time to help.

 

[Zap]

Note that some consumer electronic devices that can read USB flash drives may only work with FAT32. For instance I have a DVD player with a USB port on it that won't read NTFS volumes.

 

[Emulex]

fat32 is for instant release. ntfs default policy is caching preferred - always have to eject. last time i checked. that is why ntfs is faster. fat32 is simpler, and faster, but you don't remember having a chkdsk and losing files left and right with fat32 compared to the journalled ntfs that comes with windows 7 then you probably want to stick with ntfs. the journal and copy on write will save your butt from corruption. fat32 will not.

 

[Yellowbeard]

Seems like I read that head to head, using NTFS will place a LOT more wear on a flash drive that is left plugged in as it will perform a lot more reads and writes due to the journaling and logging. I have not seen any actual testing to see how this may affect drive longevity real world.