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February 18

New memory stick formatted W95 FAT32

I'm a Linux user. Today, I purchased a USB memory stick to send some pictures to my friend and I was surprised to see the stick was, according to fdisk, formatted W95 FAT32 (LSB). Reformatting it to a more useful NTFS isn't a problem. Any ideas why ScanDisk are still supplying FAT32 sticks? Thanks! TrogWoolley (talk) 08:34, 18 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It depends on what you mean by "useful" when it comes to a disk format. I format all removable USB drives to FAT32 to make sure that whatever I plug it into can read it, be it my computer, my phone, my printer, my photo printer, my car's entertainment console, etc... My car is 18 years old. My photo printer is older, probably 25 years old. I doubt either would be happy with an NTFS drive. For me, "useful" means that it will work without hassle. 12.116.29.106 (talk) 13:46, 18 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

In addition to the problem with devices not supporting NTFS, as 12.116.29.106 says, it's my understanding that MacOS only supports read for NTFS. -- Finlay McWalter··–·Talk 15:09, 18 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

In my personal experience consumer storage devices widely come pre-formatted with FAT32, as it's by far the most widely-supported FS in today's world. Large-capacity ones frequently are exFAT—indeed, this is the official standard for SDHC-and-up SD cards. Formatting to a different FS if desired is relatively simple; think from the manufacturer's perspective. "Do we want to pre-format with the most widely-supported FS which Just Works™ on nearly everything, or do we want NTFS which doesn't work on Android or Apple (read-only) and only got native Linux kernel write support recently which won't be enabled in everything and doesn't support some rarer NTFS features, and also do we have any patent issues to care about there? Do we care more about Grandma Mabel's flash drive she bought from us just working, and not for her to think our product is broken, or for some 'power users' who are the people that even know what 'NTFS' is in the first place, possibly having to do a quick reformat?"

Also personal plug for "cloud storage" that you can use for, among other things, sharing stuff to others: pCloud. Not getting any compensation, just a satisfied customer. They give a limited amount of free storage even. (Swiss company: note that if you purchase from them it's a foreign transaction if you are located elsewhere, which you may get charged a fee for, check ahead if concerned.) --Slowking Man (talk) 21:19, 18 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Resolved I get the transportability but for huge photos (6GB) FAT32 won't cut it. I was just surprised they are still using old tech; I guess it's the reason my newish motherboard has a PS2 port. Not a fan of cloud storage. TrogWoolley (talk) 02:39, 19 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

You can always use the split command to copy the huge photo onto the FAT32 filesystem in chunks, for example

    split -b 1000000000 /source/huge.jpg /dest/huge.part.

then the person receiving the stick can use cat (not to be confused with cat) to reassemble the parts

    cat /source/huge/part.* >/dest/huge.jpg

—if they also have Linux and are comfortable doing that, or an equivalent on what system they do have. --142.112.222.162 (talk) 17:45, 19 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

(They could also just reformat the drive with a different FS. The Linux kernel has "native" NTFS r/w support now since version 5.something; there's also been a FUSE NTFS driver for some time. exFAT also exists and any "up-to-date" "desktop/mobile" OS supports it including Linux kernel since again, version 5.something.) --Slowking Man (talk) 23:52, 20 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

For info, GUI cross-platform file splitting can be done with some file compression programs. One example is 7zip. Whether splitting a file or keeping intact, many programs have the option to minimise the compression strength and so reduce the overhead of splitting in this way. Not the most direct method, but can be more user friendly for some people. 2.24.18.110 (talk) 13:31, 25 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Regardless of how it is stored, I would like to know more about this camera that is producing 6GB pictures. Sony's 400MP camera makes monstrous photos, but they are not even half a GB uncompressed. Is he taking his photos using the LSST? 12.116.29.106 (talk) 17:39, 27 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

There's always the possibility that they're not from a digital camera. Very high DPI scans of film can reach into the gigabyte range. Pinguinn 🐧 10:56, 2 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]