Formatting 64meg memory key- Fat or Fat32?

[JEDI]

usb port on school computer fubared my memory key.

i could no longer read it even on my home computer. (lucky it;s a spare mem key and i didnt need any info on it.)

so i formatted as Fat. now reads fine. but i also had the option to format using fat32.

which is better for a memory key?

 

[WildHorse]

JEDI,
FAT will work fine. That'll work for you with your computer and with other devices like cameras, etc. FAT32 would be an even better choice, because it's "wider."

USB memory keys for use with computers currently are generally FAT 32.

The File Allocation Table contains a list of the files on your flash memory key, their sizes and their actual location in storage. Anything reading from or writing to the flash device must read and update its FAT each time.

Some older equipment like some cameras might not read/write FAT32, so in those cases, FAT is sort of a lowest common denominator-more universally readable. FAT 16 is what floppy discs have. FAT32 is what was on hard drives before Windows came out with NTFS.

If you have any trouble formatting your thumb drive, this might be helpful to you: http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=906472

ed for typo

 

[Tostada]

As I recall, before WinXP, FAT32 wasn't even supported on drives below 512MB, because FAT16 is more efficient on small drives.

Besides having less overhead, FAT16 needs less filesystem data simply because, by definition, FAT16 has 16 bits in the file allocation table per cluster, and FAT32 has 32 bits per cluster.

FAT32 has 4 KB cluster sizes all the way up to 8 GB (On drives over 32 GB, FAT32 uses 32 KB clusters, while NTFS still uses 4 KB clusters, so that's another reason NTFS is better). I think FAT16 is:

4 KB clusters on drives up to 256 MB
8 KB clusters on drives up to 512 MB
16 KB clusters on drives up to 1 GB
32 KB clusters on drives up to 2 GB
(doesn't support drives over 2 GB)

So, if you were putting tons and tons of tiny files on there, you want to go with FAT32 for drives over 256 MB.


I just tried formatting a 256MB flash drive both ways:

FAT
Used space: 0 bytes
Free space: 257,138,688 bytes = 245 MB
Capacity: 257,138,688 bytes = 245 MB

FAT32
Used space: 2,048 bytes = 2.00 KB
Free space: 256,387,072 bytes = 244 MB
Capacity: 256,389,120 bytes = 244 MB

Obviously it doesn't matter too much one way or the other.

 

[Zepper]

Use FAT. Your partitioning/formatting tool should not even allow FAT32 on such a small volume.

.bh.