File Systems - FAT32 NTFS exFAT - What/When and why to use the ____ file system on a USB or external HDD, also, what cluster size to choose.?

Question

What I have found so far about file systems:

exFAT: best to use on "flash drives" (USB)
FAT32: best compatibility (use on other operating systems and using with other devices)
NTFS: best to use on external HDD's

But why is that?

Clustersize, had something to do with the sizes of the files you are storing?

Answer 1

There is more to it, but the very basics are this:



exFAT is cross compatible with multiple OSes and allows any file of any size to be copied. Hence it's good for usb drives as they'll be used in a range of devices. It also allocates space better and helps prevent fragmentation - useful as USB drive typically have less storage capacity to work with.



NTFS is more complex and requires greater processing. However it is more reliable, better for data recovery, encryption amongst other things. It is also used by default in windows now for holding boot sector information.



Fat32 is far more restrictive, it has limited maximum partition sizes based upon cluster size and cannot copy individual files above 4GB. Hence it's only really useful on USB drives transferring smaller files. It's only real benefit is it's a simpler format, which requires less resources to manage - although this is negligible given modern computing power.



Cluster size, also known as allocation unit size basically represents the smallest amount of information a drive can write. So if you're copying a 10KB file to a drive with a 64KB cluster size, that file will use up 64KB. Or if it's a 70KB file it'll require more than one cluster, so it'll use up 128KB of memory. As this is the case, usb drives typically have small sizes as they are often used for transferring lots of small data and people don't want to waste what limited storage capacity they have. Proper hard drive's have bigger sizes as they contain larger files and tiny losses are less impactful when you have hundreds and possibly thousands of GB of storage.

Answer 2

FAT32 is best for older Windows operating system such as Windows 98, NT, Me, XP, etc



NTFS is best for newer Windows operating system such as Windows 7, 8, etc

Here's difference between FAT32 vs NTFS - http://cquirke.mvps.org/ntfs.htm



exFAT basically takes the FAT file system to the next level. It's better than FAT32 in terms of security, cluster size, file size limit, etc. It supports some features such as Alternate Data Streams, File Compression, Journaling

http://superuser.com/a/262304

Answer 3

Most hard drives in computers now use the NTFS format because it saves a lot of disk space. I changed my FAT32 drives to NTFS for that reason.



Ron