81
votes
Accepted
Which Name Is Correct, exFAT or FAT64?
There's no such thing as FAT64, at least not at this time. There's exFAT which some people refer to as FAT64.
Why do they do this? The history of the File Allocation Table is quite involved. These ...
- 8,616
49
votes
Accepted
Why is FAT32 limited to just under 2^28 clusters?
FAT32 only uses 28 bits not 32. Four bits are "reserved for future use".
So, a FAT32 partition has a maximum cluster count of 268,435,455 (228-1)
Reference
Although VFAT was a clever system, it ...
- 5,103
28
votes
Accepted
What allocation unit size to use when formatting a USB flash drive in FAT32?
For quick readers:
In general:
It depends on what kind of data you are intending to store on the device.
For all data storage media types at all sizes:
Small cluster sizes are more suitable for ...
- 745
25
votes
Which Name Is Correct, exFAT or FAT64?
Rany is mostly correct. However FAT was not based on the length field, it was based on the size of the index value. So, with floppies you had FAT12, where each cell in the FAT table was 12 bits, then ...
- 251
21
votes
Accepted
How to format a disk/sdcard as FAT32 in windows 10
While LPChip's answer is 'correct' and should work in most cases unless the partition is over 32gb. I typically use a bit of third party software from ridgecrop that does the same thing but handles ...
- 126k
17
votes
Accepted
Used space on an "empty," formatted flash drive
This is normal. An "empty" NTFS filesystem has a number of internal files such as the master file table ("$MFT"), the log file used for filesystem recovery ("$LogFile"), the volume descriptor file ("$...
- 61.4k
17
votes
Accepted
Can't transfer files larger than 2GB to FAT32 USBs on MacOS HighSierra
This is a bug in the current version of macOS 10.13 High Sierra.
For now don't use Finder.app to transfer files larger than 2 GB to a FAT32 formatted volume/drive as the operation will fail.
In the ...
- 408
15
votes
Accepted
NTFS file system read-only by Ubuntu - remount doesn't work
Just to also have the additional piece of information here.
Windows, if you "shutdown" does not actually shut down most of the time, but only hibernates.
Windows Hiberation
The fix for people who ...
- 166
15
votes
NTFS file system read-only by Ubuntu - remount doesn't work
In my case running following command fixed the issue. It removes log files created my windows which are not cleared properly unless windows is shutdown completely.
sudo ntfsfix /dev/sdxX # where x is ...
- 251
14
votes
What allocation unit size to use when formatting a USB flash drive in FAT32?
The Microsoft article
Default cluster size for NTFS, FAT, and exFAT
has this table for default cluster sizes :
As your drive has 3.63 GB in size, the default sector size is 4KB.
As you can see, the ...
- 438k
13
votes
How to do UEFI+GPT with a iso file greater than 4GB
Rufus developer here. I'm going to try to add a proper answer since there seems to be a lot of misconception about the whole thing. Hopefully, this will help others.
RUFUS says that it cannot be ...
- 5,738
13
votes
Which Name Is Correct, exFAT or FAT64?
While exFAT borrows some concepts of FAT, there are major differences, so the claim that exFAT is (basically) FAT64 is simply wrong.
Between FAT12 and 16 only the size of the allocation table was ...
- 1,850
13
votes
How to format a disk/sdcard as FAT32 in windows 10
Yes, up to 32 gigs, as I found out later.
The GUI version of format is limited only to NTFS and exFAT, probably because this is what you'll ever need on Windows.
Luckily if you run format from the ...
- 57.7k
7
votes
Windows 10 installation from usb - Which file system to chose?
That depends on the size of your .iso if it is below 4 GB then you can proceed with FAT32 but if it is greater than 4 GB you should format it using NTFS.
This is because FAT32 only supports ...
- 485
7
votes
Accepted
rsync: mkstemp "<filename>" failed: Function not implemented (38)
mkstemp makes a temporary file and sets its permissions to 0600. If the underlying filesystem (eg FAT) doesn't support permissions, this will fail.
So, append the flag:
--no-perms
Given that your ...
- 2,214
7
votes
What allocation unit size to use when formatting a USB flash drive in FAT32?
When you format it, the disk is split in allocations units. Each not empty files on the disk will have one or more allocations units attributed to store its content.
So, the smallest file will take ...
- 246
7
votes
Accepted
Flash drive not showing correct capacity. What are possible efforts to save it?
As you have stated that losing the data is not an issue:
Plug the flash drive into your computer with Windows and enter
diskpart
Once you're in diskpart, enter
list disk
When you have the number ...
- 1,405
6
votes
Accepted
Can't mount FAT32 drive under Ubuntu Linux
For me, fsck.vfat /dev/sdd1 returning "Logical sector size is zero." was because it was not vfat, but rather newer exfat. So I had to install tools appropriate tools (apt-get install exfat-utils exfat-...
- 2,606
6
votes
Which Name Is Correct, exFAT or FAT64?
Yes, exFAT is the official name and FAT64 is its synonym.
- 21.2k
5
votes
Max files per directory on NTFS vol vs FAT32
The maximum number of files within a directory of a FAT file system is 65,536 if all files have short filenames (8.3 format). Short filenames are stored in a single 32-byte entry.
That means the ...
- 61
5
votes
How to reorder the files of a FAT32 file system?
It's not strange. Sorting the list requires a lot of memory, which may not be available on small embedded systems like MP3 players. You need a big enough array to store all the filenames before ...
- 25.2k
5
votes
What is FAT's maximum file size?
File size on FAT is stored in a 32-bit field.
On FAT32 the field is treated as unsigned allowing for files up to 4294967294 bytes (apparently 4294967295 is not allowed for some reason, possiblly "-1"...
- 5,860
4
votes
Why a "Not enough space on disk" error on 7zip even with sufficient space?
According to the author of 7-zip at the following link, there's a bug where dragging and dropping from the 7-zip window to Explorer can cause this. I don't know if it's been fixed in later versions, ...
- 386
4
votes
How to create a diskimage of an SD card with partitions having different filesystems?
Linux dd.
dd if=/dev/sdX# of=/home/duckqueen/Desktop/usbimage.iso
- 268
4
votes
What allocation unit size to use when formatting a USB flash drive in FAT32?
You can use anything you want and it will work. The differences are:
Wasted space
The block size is the minimum size occupied by a file, so it you save a 2 KB file with 4 KB allocation units you ...
- 965
4
votes
windows 10 installation creates partitions in wrong order and fails because it thinks EFI system partition formatted as NTFS
update:the issue went away after I recreated the usb drive using a different method.
the usb drive above was created by downloading the iso in windows using media creation tool, then burning to USB ...
- 480
4
votes
NTFS file system read-only by Ubuntu - remount doesn't work
If you are in ubuntu and you have already mounted the NTFS Partition, do the following
Unmount the Ntfs partition by running sudo umount -a
Run sudo ntfsfix /dev/sdaxx (for example /dev/sda3) to get ...
- 41
4
votes
Unable to read FAT32 formatted drive in Windows 10
It is possible that your windows might not be assigning letters to the drives properly.
You should open run (windows + R), and then type 'diskmgmt.msc'.
If you can view your drive there, just simply ...
- 397
3
votes
Accepted
Effects of Drag & Drop and Copy-Paste on FAT32 file table
Your player seems to pick tracks in order in which files occur in a directory. This order depends on many factors, and since removed files leave holes in the directory which are later filled by newly ...
- 9,058
3
votes
Accepted
Windows Phone WPSystem folders "security ID structure is invalid"
WP8.1 encrypts apps and app data when they're on the SD card. It's possible to get the data off, but you must do it using the phone directly unless you want useless, encrypted data.
Remove the System ...
- 6,049
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible