Why fat32 on notebooks ?

daveza

daveza

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Is there a reason why notebooks are formatted using fat32, and is there a downside to reformatting them to ntfs ?

Is one able to convert fat32 to ntfs without a wipe and reload ?
 
No idea why a notebook would be formatted with FAT32. By default it should be NTFS. You can convert FAT32 to NTFS without loosing any data.
 
daveza said:
Is there a reason why notebooks are formatted using fat32, and is there a downside to reformatting them to ntfs ?
Click to expand...

Good question. I have a mates one here on my desk and it's also fat32.
 
If it is running a version of Windows, then you can format it as NTFS. In fact, I find it strage that a Windows machine would be formatted as FAT32.

NTFS is a proprietary file system developed by Microsoft. FAT32 is an open standard, and is supported on almost all modern computing devices, including cameras, cellphones, gaming consoles, home theatre systems, media players, iPod, etc.

Most non-microsoft devices won't be able to read an NTFS formatted disk. My PS3 and home theatre system won't read an external HD formatted in NTFS. Reads FAT32 with no problems though. Same goes for my HP printer/scanner/copier device - which can only save scanned documents to a FAT32 formatted flash disk.

What OS are these notebooks running? If it is not Windows, then I wouldn't be surprised..
 
Yes, there is a reason and it has to do with licensing and royalties. The companies concerned are too cheap to pay MS for an NTFS license. They rather opt for the cheaper FAT32 license. This has to do with the software which pre-loads the Operating Sytem or restores the OS (not the OS itself). So while Windows XP, Vista and 7 are capable of formatting to NTFS, the software that pre-loads the OS is not. It is quite likely a variant of Linux. And the companies have only elected to pay the cheaper license to MS to pre-format the discs.

Fortunately you can easily shift and convert the underlying file system to NTFS. Very good Instructions here...

http://www.aumha.org/win5/a/ntfscvt.php
 
Garyvdh said:
Yes, there is a reason and it has to do with licensing and royalties. The companies concerned are too cheap to pay MS for an NTFS license. They rather opt for the cheaper FAT32 license. This has to do with the software which pre-loads the Operating Sytem or restores the OS (not the OS itself). So while Windows XP, Vista and 7 are capable of formatting to NTFS, the software that pre-loads the OS is not. It is quite likely a variant of Linux. And the companies have only elected to pay the cheaper license to MS to pre-format the discs.

Fortunately you can easily shift and convert the underlying file system to NTFS. Very good Instructions here...

http://www.aumha.org/win5/a/ntfscvt.php
Click to expand...

That's very interesting....
 
I always do my FAT32-to-NTFS conversions with Acronis Disk Director - in all honesty, I've never backed up before doing this and so far, no problems or issues... after conversion , the PC booted to OS as normal.
 
It's the 2.5" harddrives, for some reason companies always make them fat32... I've messed around with a whole lot of those 2.5" drives, and they always fat32 (except for one, but that because it was my mates and he changed it :p)
 
howardb said:
I always do my FAT32-to-NTFS conversions with Acronis Disk Director - in all honesty, I've never backed up before doing this and so far, no problems or issues... after conversion , the PC booted to OS as normal.
Click to expand...

Make sure you realign the partition (if needed) to a 4K boundary or you will get 512 byte clusters after conversion instead of 4k clusters. That will definitely degrade system performance.

See the article I posted for more info...

http://www.aumha.org/win5/a/ntfscvt.php

You can check your converted disks by doing a chkdsk on the command line (requires Admin priveleges in Win 7).
 
Acer and Toshiba were notorious for this, but I suspect they have corrected it since 2008.
 
We see the same thing on the HP smart starts, they format the drive at first with Fat32, then convert the drive afterwards.

Suppose they want to cut cost where they can....
 
Garyvdh said:
Acer and Toshiba were notorious for this, but I suspect they have corrected it since 2008.
Click to expand...

Ja, the one lying on my desk is a Acer circa 2005.

Never knew about the realigning thing, thx. I'll put the software on a bootable cd and do it to this acer lying here before I convert to ntfs. Hopefully this helps with the problem I'm experiencing with Avira and disk i/o on this lappy.
 
How does one get around the 4gb file size restriction on FAT32?

I find it retarded, for eg., that Xbox360 cannot read NTFS media and forces you to have a FAT32 drive, meaning no HD media > 4GB >.<

Xbox360 is a MS device, why no NTFS support?
 
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Garyvdh said:
Yes, there is a reason and it has to do with licensing and royalties. The companies concerned are too cheap to pay MS for an NTFS license. They rather opt for the cheaper FAT32 license. This has to do with the software which pre-loads the Operating Sytem or restores the OS (not the OS itself). So while Windows XP, Vista and 7 are capable of formatting to NTFS, the software that pre-loads the OS is not. It is quite likely a variant of Linux. And the companies have only elected to pay the cheaper license to MS to pre-format the discs.

Fortunately you can easily shift and convert the underlying file system to NTFS. Very good Instructions here...

http://www.aumha.org/win5/a/ntfscvt.php
Click to expand...

:confused:

Conradl said:
That's very interesting....
Click to expand...

First time I have heard of that...and I'm about to call bull****, but I'll rather wait...
 
There's no doubt that NTFS is more secure, and indeed more space-economical, on a fixed drive.

But anyone wanting to convert a portable drive to NTFS should be aware of a few downsides, most notably:

1) If you're thinking of moving a portable HDD around, for example, not all operating systems will read NTFS

2) If you need to go deep and dirty into DOS trying to recover data, for example, NTFS can be problematic, whereas good old DOS has no problems at all handling FAT32. Some 'rescue' applications will require you to jump through several extra hoops if the data you are trying to access is NTFS
 
Slootvreter said:
First time I have heard of that...and I'm about to call bull****, but I'll rather wait...
Click to expand...

It makes a lot of sense. If the app that formats the HD is not from MS then NTFS can only be used if royalties are paid to MS. FAT32 however can be implemented by circumventing MS patents and thus be royalty free or you can license it from MS at a lower fee than NTFS.
 
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