FAT vs exFAT (vs Others File Systems): The File System Thread

[Designer225]

So... after the last two days of experimenting with my USB flash drive, I decided to post the thread here. Reasons: before I first formatted the drive, the flash drive's on FAT32; after QUICK formatting it to exFAT I began having problems with missing and corrupt files; in fact it was so annoying that I reformatted it FULLY to FAT32 again and no more problems, which leaves a question: Why doesn't exFAT work on my USB drive while FAT32 works?

So, at least in my point of view, exFAT has gains and drawbacks:

Gains: The most significant gain is the increased speed of programs. I do Java coding a lot, especially since I have Intro to Programming class as one of my classes; thus the external drives are needed to store information, since school doesn't allow storage of greater than 100 MB and at any rate the size of USB Drive:\Intro to Programming - [REDACTED - Why should I show the teacher's name ?]\ is going to exceed 100 MB anyway (since besides the classwork and homework programs I write, I also write other programs alone). With the old FAT32 partition the speed to quit Eclipse is slow as a snail (2 minutes, to be exact); with exFAT the time is shorten to just a couple seconds. Seriously, every second feels like a minute to me .

Drawbacks: File corruption and deletion, and especially errors. Whenever I tried to create a .zip file, when I reload the drive it says it was corrupted - in fact it shows this message "Please insert the last disk of the Multi-Volume set and click OK to continue" when there's only one zipped file that contains information for that! Besides that, when I reload Eclipse I found all of the projects inaccessible, and when I do get the folders working everything inside the project folders is gone! (No help when you still have 1 class to do...) Thank god I have a backup copy, but it means to redo everything. All of that repeated after the second formatting (full format, also to exFAT), and all hell stopped after I full format the drive to FAT32.

And here's the gains and drawbacks of FAT32 (again, my POV):

Gains: Stability. Never had I gotten a drive in FAT32 format did troubles arise. At least not yet.

Drawbacks: Slowness and limitations, The larges file possible is chopped to 4GB, and a partition with FAT32 file system can go up to 32GB and that's it. Any higher and you would need NTFS or exFAT or other file systems that supports higher memory partitions. Besides the limitations, loading speed is pretty slow, so slow that I had thought once to format the drive to NTFS. I still consider whether I should format the drive to NTFS or keep it to FAT32 for the time being.

Sorry that I have to rant, but exFAT just doesn't work properly with my flash drive. Anyway, just talk about FAT and exFAT in this thread, or everything related to file systems .

[steve_v]

I never really got the pint of exFAT TBH, I use ext2 or FAT32 for small disks, where the overhead of say, NTFS is a significant chunk of the capacity.

NTFS for everything >16GB that neads to be readable by Windoze

My larger storage arrays are all ZFS now.

For anything else: ext4.

Reiserfs can be a good choice for certain workloads, if you don't mind that the guy who wrote it is a bit of a creep.

The only reason I'd use a non-journalled filesystem is, as above, on really small disks. Even then the potential for corruption if it gets pulled in the middle of a write makes me a bit leery, especially given my not so 'flash' experience with cheap USB disks.

I would suggest ext2, but you'll need to install a driver...

Filesystems are fun, I feel kinda sorry for those stuck with only 3 to choose from

[Aghanim]

I'd use NTFS for external storages and shared windows linux partition and ext4 for linux internal storage

I'm thinking to convert to btrfs though

[steve_v]

I've heard a few nice success stories re. BTRFS from the professional realm, the only thing that's really keeping me from using in a production environment it is that IIRC it still lacks RAID5/6-like functionality.

Hence the liking for ZFS, despite the licensing concerns.

[worir4]

He he, fat...

[Camacha]

I am currently having some trouble with a NTFS drive. I really wish Microsoft would deploy bootable ReFS already, because that should make file systems a lot less fragile. I experimented with it a while back, but it turns out a lot if virus software does not know how to deal with it yet.

[Designer225]

I am currently having some trouble with a NTFS drive. I really wish Microsoft would deploy bootable ReFS already, because that should make file systems a lot less fragile. I experimented with it a while back, but it turns out a lot if virus software does not know how to deal with it yet.

What are the troubles then?

[sal_vager]

It's not good to quick format any drive to another file system as quick format just zero's out the existing partition.

To be absolutely sure it's going to work it's best to delete the partition completely, then make a new one and format that to whatever you need.

[Camacha]

What are the troubles then?

The virus scanner pretends to scan the file under ReFS, but returns an all clear while in reality no files have been scanned. This makes checking and sanitizing any ReFS drive impossible. Plus, of course, boot drives cannot be ReFS at all.

Edit: oh, you meant NTFS? The drive bluescreens almost immediately after boot with an explicit NFTS error. This is fairly typical for bits that fell over in the wrong place and that sort of stuff.

To be absolutely sure it's going to work it's best to delete the partition completely, then make a new one and format that to whatever you need.

I did. I always do.

Edited November 9, 2014 by Camacha

[Designer225]

What's the NTFS error called?

EDIT:

It's not good to quick format any drive to another file system as quick format just zero's out the existing partition.

To be absolutely sure it's going to work it's best to delete the partition completely, then make a new one and format that to whatever you need.

Thanks for the tip. I'll mess around with my USB drive a little bit.

Speaking of which can you have multiple partitions in a single USB drive?

EDIT2: Nope. You can't have multiple partitions in a single USB drive. Nor can't you delete a partition. At least for me via the System Management in Windows 7...

Edited November 9, 2014 by Designer225

[Camacha]

What's the NTFS error called?

Just NTFS_FILE_SYSTEM. The Windows 8 error parsing is very sparse and returns little information. Even when turning automatic reboot off it yields just the following message:

Your PC ran into a problem and needs to restart. We're just collecting some error info, and then you can restart. (0% complete).

If you'd like to know more, you can search online later for this error: NTFS_FILE_SYSTEM

What's the NTFS error called?

Speaking of which can you have multiple partitions in a single USB drive?

Yes, you can. Modern higher end USB 3 sticks even have proper SSD controller on board, those are a lot like normal drives.

Edited November 9, 2014 by Camacha

[sal_vager]

Not via system management no, you'd need something more capable like Gparted, there's lots of other disk management programs I bet but that's what I use.

I have a few USB sticks with more than one partition of different types and even one with a UDF partition, you should still be able to do a full format though.

[Nuke]

my only requirement from a filesystem is that it doesn't eat my files. ntfs has never eaten a file of mine and thats why i still use it. i have linux installs in my room that use a myriad of file systems, but ive not use them enough to judge how good they are at not eating files. if it aint broke dont fix it.

[Camacha]

my only requirement from a filesystem is that it doesn't eat my files. ntfs has never eaten a file of mine and thats why i still use it. i have linux installs in my room that use a myriad of file systems, but ive not use them enough to judge how good they are at not eating files. if it aint broke dont fix it.

Count yourself lucky. There are good reasons Microsoft is lining a new system up.

[steve_v]

I don't know of any filesystems that *actively* eat files, but most don't deal well with hardware faults and make little or no effort to ensure on-disk consistency

Journaling is good, journal + checksums is better.

Lost data is, however, lost data. There's nothing the filesystem can do about it unless you have some form of redundancy, the best form of redundancy is a good backup strategy

The only production-ready filesystem I know of with journaling, checksums *and* redundancy is ZFS, still not an excuse to skip backups though.

Edited November 10, 2014 by steve_v

[K^2]

If you are switching from FAT32 to exFAT, you definitely need to do a full format. NTFS is tree-based, so it doesn't care if you have random junk floating on your drive. FAT's table-based, as the name suggests, so it needs at least the table to be completely cleared when switching formats.

[Designer225]

Just NTFS_FILE_SYSTEM. The Windows 8 error parsing is very sparse and returns little information. Even when turning automatic reboot off it yields just the following message:

Here's what I found: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/ff557433(v=vs.85).aspx

Also, Google search link: https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=NTFS_FILE_SYSTEM+Windows+8