Hey guy, I bought a new Flashdrive recently, and its 2 GB one. I was wondering what the difference between FAT and FAT32 was. Which is faster?
Neither is faster, but Fat 32 you can transfer bigger files then you can with Fat32, If you can use NTFS.
Isnt FAT like oldschool? And I would also like to know a but more about the difference between each if no-one minds.
FAT is indeed ancient, but USB drives often come formatted with it. I forget if FAT32 and NTFS have a minimum size, I don't think they do. I believe FAT and FAT32 lose you a portion of the drive's free space when formatting (if you format a 160GB drive with NTFS you get 149GB, versus 147 if you use FAT32, not sure about FAT) but also, they have limits on the largest file you can store. For example, FAT32 can't recognise any individual file larger than 4GB, so DVD isos and HD rips are out! On a USB disk this isn't so relevant, but it seems to make sense to go with the newer tech.
Check out these links for more info:- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTFS http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_Allocation_Table
Of course it all depends on how you wish to use the pen drive. NTFS will only be read on devices that run the NTFS file system, eg Windows XP, Vista & Windows NT. If you want to use the USB disk on many different platforms (e.g. Apple Mac's, PC's running Win 98, XP, NT, Vista, Stereo's etc) then use FAT32. If it will only be used on Windows PC's running XP / Vista go for NTFS.
rogeball, edit your sig to conform to forum specs ASAP. you have 18 lines. 1. Text-only signatures should have at most 5 lines of text.
