27
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 ...
- 725
22
votes
Accepted
No space left in device error despite being empty
FAT32 32-bit short file names must also be uppercase (technically any ASCII character in the range below 0x80, excluding space), to hit the maximum of 65,534 files.
Long file names will take up more ...
- 8,759
21
votes
Accepted
How to format a disk/SD card 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 ...
- 131k
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 ...
- 418
17
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 ...
- 286
17
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 ...
- 271
16
votes
How to do UEFI+GPT with an 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 ...
- 7,214
14
votes
How to format a disk/SD card 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 ...
- 63.2k
12
votes
No space left in device error despite being empty
You already have the answer
I keep reading online that FAT32/vFat have some limitations, including:
Maximum of 65,534 files in a single directory. Less if the file names are not (8.3).
You are ...
- 3,739
8
votes
Accepted
Missing Filesize in FAT32
512 Bytes per Sector
8 Sectors per Cluster
800 Sectors total
root Clusternumber is 2
32 reserved Sectors
2 FATs
1 Sector per FAT
32 reserved sectors, 2 FAT sectors leaves 800 - 34 = 766 sectors for ...
- 7,721
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
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-...
- 2,661
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 ...
- 2,520
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 ...
- 1,524
7
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"...
- 6,495
6
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 ...
- 71
6
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 ...
- 28.8k
6
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 ...
- 236
6
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 ...
- 161
5
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
- 288
5
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, ...
- 425
5
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 ...
- 1,300
5
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 ...
- 447
5
votes
Accepted
FAT32 and exFAT, which file timestamps are supported?
Yes, if the file system is FAT32, the entry of last access time cannot be written, or be changed.
The specifications of the exFAT file system include:
Timestamp granularity of 10 ms for Create and ...
- 2,139
5
votes
No space left in device error despite being empty
As mentioned in the other answers, a second directory entry is created with the long filename, since "txt" is lowercase (instead of uppercase) and thus a LFN entry is generated to store that....
- 1,328
5
votes
Formatting 500gb HDD NTFS to FAT32 then returns: The volume is too big for FAT32
The "failure" that you are seeing is a limitations in the built-in Windows tools which are limited to 32GB for FAT32 partitions.
As per the Microsoft page Default cluster size for NTFS, FAT, ...
- 94.5k
4
votes
How to reorder the files of a FAT32 file system?
Another option that avoids the need for specific utility and allows you to set the sequence in any order you want, is to simply rename the files or folders on the FAT32 drive.
I have a USB flash ...
- 41
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 ...
- 975
4
votes
Accepted
mac disk utility how to format micro SD card as fat32
For anyone else having this problem I managed to resolve it, using the View menu of Disk Utility, ensure Show All Devices is ticked. Then another level of nodes are added to the tree view in the left ...
- 549
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