Why is FAT32 still used in so many memory devices?

[coolermaster]

FAT32 does not have a great reputation.

Why do memory manufacturers insist on using FAT32 for their 32GB, 64GB flash memory devices?

 

[Mark R]

Because there is no widely compatible alternative.

NTFS and HFS+ are MS and Apple proprietary. Ext2, 3 and 4 are Linux only.

exFAT is MS proprietary and restrictively patented, so has limited OS support.

While FAT32 is a MS proprietary file it is openly licensed, so has universal OS support.

 

[coolermaster]

Thanks Mark for that fast and concise response.

 

[Mixolydian]

Ext2, 3 and 4 are Linux only.

I don't know much about filesystems, but why haven't these been ported over to Windows/Mac and other OSes?

 

[coolermaster]

BTW, Mark - should users just reformat their 32GB memory sticks or camera cards as NTFS as soon as they buy them? (assuming they have supporting OS's)

 

[ALIVE]

BTW, Mark - should users just reformat their 32GB memory sticks or camera cards as NTFS as soon as they buy them? (assuming they have supporting OS's)

well it depends camera cards no keep them in the same profile as they came or else the camera will not be able to read them
as for memory you will only use to store files and move the files between computers you can reformat it to any file system you want by the way ms made exfat as a replacement to the fat32 system to address some of the limitations of the old protocol as 2gb max file size. and also keeps it a light file system with not unnecessary writes done in order to maintain long longevity to the memory limited cycles. but then it is up to you at which format you will use them

 

[Elixer]

I don't know much about filesystems, but why haven't these been ported over to Windows/Mac and other OSes?

You need OS level support for them, and MS doesn't want to support a open standard.
While there has been some attempts to make ext drivers for windows, it really isn't robust to use everyday as your filesystem.

 

[ViRGE]

Because there is no widely compatible alternative.

NTFS and HFS+ are MS and Apple proprietary. Ext2, 3 and 4 are Linux only.

exFAT is MS proprietary and restrictively patented, so has limited OS support.

While FAT32 is a MS proprietary file it is openly licensed, so has universal OS support.

I would add that while exFAT isn't extensively used right now, it is both the de facto and de jour replacement for FAT32. So in relation to the OP's question, while FAT32 is still in wide use today it's really only a matter of time. Once XP is retired every commercial OS will support exFAT, and in the meantime SDXC already mandates exFAT today. So we won't be on FAT32 forever, it will just feel like it.

 

[BFG10K]

BTW, Mark - should users just reformat their 32GB memory sticks or camera cards as NTFS as soon as they buy them? (assuming they have supporting OS's)

No, if you're going to reformat them, use exFAT.

 

[VirtualLarry]

The question you should be asking is this - with the introduction of larger-sized flash memory devics (256GB and beyond) - why does MS still arbitrarily limit the FAT32 formatter in modern OSes to 32GB volumes? There's absolutely no technical reason to do so. The only reason that they limit it, is such that they can push their proprietary NTFS filesystem in the market.

Thank goodness for "FAT32Formatter", but that doesn't help me, because I use the HP USB Formatting Tool, which uses the OS'es built-in format routines, and doesn't have the ability to format FAT32 volumes over 32GB, nor I don't think it can format exFAT volumes.

 

[Lorne]

Thought there was an issue with NTSF formatting on SSD USB devices, eg. In the begining of Win7 you could format a thumbdrive NTSF but after SP1 you couldnt because there was rumors of them being bricked (Not a rumor for me).
I had to use "Convert" to convert my thumbdrives to NTSF and on accasion still brick one or lose data, So I dont think the issue has been resolved.

 

[corkyg]

Do thumbdrives have to be formatted FAT32 to be bootable?

 

[ALIVE]

Do thumbdrives have to be formatted FAT32 to be bootable?

it can be either way fat32 or ntfs
as for exfat i do not know if ms made this filesystem bootable anyone here to knows?

 

[Cerb]

Thought there was an issue with NTSF formatting on SSD USB devices, eg. In the begining of Win7 you could format a thumbdrive NTSF but after SP1 you couldnt because there was rumors of them being bricked (Not a rumor for me).
I had to use "Convert" to convert my thumbdrives to NTSF and on accasion still brick one or lose data, So I dont think the issue has been resolved.

NTFS. But anyway, I've heard of some SD cards bricking due to using different FSes (very rare thing, today), but not regular USB drives, and have never encountered that, myself, either (I always reformat to NTFS, since it's more reliable and compatible than FAT32). Older USB drives would die quicker with NTFS, as they would come from the factory with a FAT32 partition that was aligned to their blocks and pages, with clusters set to their specific page sizes, which tended to be large (today page sizes tend to be 4K or 8K, so it's not a big deal).

The convert utility may have problems in the case of a FAT FS that needs a full chkdsk scan and repair run on it, though. I'm not sure what happens, then, since I've never used it in that context, and always ran a full chkdsk before using it with an OS drive.

Do thumbdrives have to be formatted FAT32 to be bootable?

No, the partition just needs to be bootable.

 

[Mark R]

Thought there was an issue with NTSF formatting on SSD USB devices, eg. In the begining of Win7 you could format a thumbdrive NTSF but after SP1 you couldnt because there was rumors of them being bricked (Not a rumor for me).
I had to use "Convert" to convert my thumbdrives to NTSF and on accasion still brick one or lose data, So I dont think the issue has been resolved.

Many USB flash drives use the slowest flash memory possible. To avoid making them completely useless, they often contain software algorithms that give good performance for FAT-type accesses (and sequential writes).

NTFS tends to use different patterns of writing (due to file tables being located in different places, journaling, etc.) The acceleration algorithms don't like this, and the drives operate super-slow.

I've formatted some USB drives to NTFS and they were so slow I thought I'd bricked them, but I reformatted them to FAT, and they recovered.

 

[ViRGE]

The question you should be asking is this - with the introduction of larger-sized flash memory devics (256GB and beyond) - why does MS still arbitrarily limit the FAT32 formatter in modern OSes to 32GB volumes? There's absolutely no technical reason to do so. The only reason that they limit it, is such that they can push their proprietary NTFS filesystem in the market.

A couple of reasons really. For desktop hard drives it keeps users from using FAT32, pushing them to NTFS so that they get journaling and other "modern" functionality. For removable drives, FAT32's lack of a free space bitmap becomes a performance issue the larger you go, which is why exFAT introduces just such a map. In either scenario there's a better file system available than FAT32.

 

[ViRGE]

it can be either way fat32 or ntfs

Note that this is technically only true for BIOS operation; UEFI throws a wrench in things. Unfortunately the current UEFI spec only supports FAT32, so while BIOS can handle any file system (it just chainloads via boot sectors), UEFI will go and specifically look for a FAT32 file system to find its boot file. So for UEFI OS installs, a thumb drive would need to be FAT32 formatted for the system to boot into UEFI mode for the install.

 

[BFG10K]

Thought there was an issue with NTSF formatting on SSD USB devices, eg. In the begining of Win7 you could format a thumbdrive NTSF but after SP1 you couldnt because there was rumors of them being bricked (Not a rumor for me).

If a drive bricks itself simply because of a particular file system (or particular data) then the drive is faulty by design and/or manufacturing.

 

[BFG10K]

The question you should be asking is this - with the introduction of larger-sized flash memory devics (256GB and beyond) - why does MS still arbitrarily limit the FAT32 formatter in modern OSes to 32GB volumes? There's absolutely no technical reason to do so. The only reason that they limit it, is such that they can push their proprietary NTFS filesystem in the market.

FAT32 losses efficiency and performance as the partition/drive size goes up.

But if you really want to, you can still format big drives to FAT32 using the command prompt.

 

[Charlie98]

I have a fairly new SanDisk Cruzer 16GB flash drive and reformatted it to NTFS... it was much slower than FAT32. I tried exFAT and it was a little faster...

8.8GB video file transferred through 2.0 USB port:

FAT32 - 30 minutes
exFAT - 24 minutes
NTFS - 44 minutes

Furthermore,

7.15GB video file :

16GB Cruzer - 21 minutes
8GB Cruzer - 9 minutes

Not that this is any sort of definitive data, but just my pedestrian-level investigation.

 

[RU482]

I have a fairly new SanDisk Cruzer 16GB flash drive and reformatted it to NTFS... it was much slower than FAT32. I tried exFAT and it was a little faster...

8.8GB video file transferred through 2.0 USB port:

FAT32 - 30 minutes
exFAT - 24 minutes
NTFS - 44 minutes

Not that this is any sort of definitive data, but just my pedestrian-level investigation.

in what order did you run this test?

 

[Charlie98]

in what order did you run this test?

I originally had it formatted in NTFS (did that some time ago, thinking I was being very clever... until I read this thread.) Then FAT32, then exFAT.

 

[Cerb]

I have a fairly new SanDisk Cruzer 16GB flash drive and reformatted it to NTFS... it was much slower than FAT32. I tried exFAT and it was a little faster...

8.8GB (em. added) video file transferred through 2.0 USB port:

How did you make that work? On FAT32, it should have failed, unless you split it into 3 files.

The NTFS speed results look about right, though. My 16GB Cruzer typically gets 3-5MB/s, but usually 3.5-4MB/s with single large files. It's going to be hard to get a journaling FS to be the fastest on a slow device, unless you disable the ability to recover (ext3 w/ writeback, FI).

 

[Charlie98]

How did you make that work? On FAT32, it should have failed, unless you split it into 3 files.

The NTFS speed results look about right, though. My 16GB Cruzer typically gets 3-5MB/s, but usually 3.5-4MB/s with single large files. It's going to be hard to get a journaling FS to be the fastest on a slow device, unless you disable the ability to recover (ext3 w/ writeback, FI).

It was a single file folder containing 4 files.

Nice thing about my new Cruzer vs my 3 older ones is they have no bloatware. Wish I could get rid of it...

 

[Cerb]

Nice thing about my new Cruzer vs my 3 older ones is they have no bloatware. Wish I could get rid of it...

Reformat, and it goes *poof*. I've occasionally tried external HDD bloatware (Only Simpletech's has been good enough to use as advertised), but never USB stick bloatware.

I got mine just a couple months ago, and it had their regular crap on it, for the short time between opening it and formatting it.