NTFS vs exFAT for flash drives

[djdelarosa25]

Overall, which is the better file system?

[minibois]

Depends (as with anything tech).

The main down side to ExFat is the file size limit of 4Gibibyte, while the main downside is that only Windows system can natively write to NTFS drives (I know there are plugins and other workarounds for other systems).

 

So if you plan to use your thumb drive for only Windows? Choose NTFS. If you want to use it for other system too, without the plugin hassle (like if you need to share files with others that use Macs) than ExFAT is better, if you are not over the 4GiB per file limit.

[JoostinOnline]

13 minutes ago, Minibois said:

Depends (as with anything tech).

The main down side to ExFat is the file size limit of 4Gibibyte, while the main downside is that only Windows system can natively write to NTFS drives (I know there are plugins and other workarounds for other systems).

 

So if you plan to use your thumb drive for only Windows? Choose NTFS. If you want to use it for other system too, without the plugin hassle (like if you need to share files with others that use Macs) than ExFAT is better, if you are not over the 4GiB per file limit.

exFAT doesn't have the 4GB file limit. 

 

Unless you're using pre-XP computers, exFAT is best. 

[Ertman]

13 minutes ago, Minibois said:

Depends (as with anything tech).

The main down side to ExFat is the file size limit of 4Gibibyte, while the main downside is that only Windows system can natively write to NTFS drives (I know there are plugins and other workarounds for other systems).

 

So if you plan to use your thumb drive for only Windows? Choose NTFS. If you want to use it for other system too, without the plugin hassle (like if you need to share files with others that use Macs) than ExFAT is better, if you are not over the 4GiB per file limit.

You are thinking of Fat32, I believe that ExFat has a file size limit in the exabyte range.

[minibois]

Just now, JoostinOnline said:

exFAT doesn't have the 4GB file limit. 

Just now, Ertman said:

You are thinking of Fat32.

Frick. I always get these two confused.

 

Well what is the downside of ExFat in that case?!?

[Ertman]

3 minutes ago, Minibois said:

Frick. I always get these two confused.

 

Well what is the downside of ExFat in that case?!?

Not really anything aside from journaling. For Flash drives, exFat its about preference. I would choose exFat over NTFS for a flash drive and NTFS for internal. AFAIK exFat is also a bit faster on file transfers.

[mariushm]

ExFat is more optimized for Flash media, I think it uses less space for storing metadata (info about files, who created them etc), no journaling etc, and it would probably be more optimized for reading/writing contents on devices which use batteries or have weaker processors (digital cameras, music players etc)

 

See Features section : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ExFAT

 

[JoostinOnline]

1 hour ago, Minibois said:

Frick. I always get these two confused.

 

Well what is the downside of ExFat in that case?!?

The only thing I don't like about it is how OS's try to set the cluster size super high, like 128kb. You usually have to use a third party program to give it a reasonable size. The higher the cluster size, the more room small files take up. It's supposed to offer a speed benefit, but I've never noticed it. 

[mariushm]

It's set like that for performance and at a lesser degree for media endurance reasons.

 

Flash media is arranged in 512 bytes blocks that can be read or written, but only multiple blocks can be erased at one time (blocks are arranged in pages of 4KB of data or more and you have to erase whole page to write blocks in that page)

Then you have several layers of flash media stacked on top of each other to form a memory chip, it's common to have up to 48-64 layers stacked to form a high capacity memory chip.

 

So the controller often has 4-8 or even more "channels" which can read in parallel from those layers various blocks. So by setting a high cluster, like 32-128 KB, you're sort of making the controller use all its channels more often, and even if an application reads 1 KB, the memory controller would have in its read cache the next few KB and that would speed things up..

 

And really, it's not such a big deal... you have 1GB or higher media and most of your content is at least 50-100 KB (jpg pictures, music, video files... the ratio between 128 KB+ files and the smaller files would be super small)

[JoostinOnline]

1 hour ago, mariushm said:

It's set like that for performance and at a lesser degree for media endurance reasons.

 

Flash media is arranged in 512 bytes blocks that can be read or written, but only multiple blocks can be erased at one time (blocks are arranged in pages of 4KB of data or more and you have to erase whole page to write blocks in that page)

Then you have several layers of flash media stacked on top of each other to form a memory chip, it's common to have up to 48-64 layers stacked to form a high capacity memory chip.

 

So the controller often has 4-8 or even more "channels" which can read in parallel from those layers various blocks. So by setting a high cluster, like 32-128 KB, you're sort of making the controller use all its channels more often, and even if an application reads 1 KB, the memory controller would have in its read cache the next few KB and that would speed things up..

 

And really, it's not such a big deal... you have 1GB or higher media and most of your content is at least 50-100 KB (jpg pictures, music, video files... the ratio between 128 KB+ files and the smaller files would be super small)

When I did some work for a school I had Mac app installers on my flash drive. It took up several extra GB because they're made up of thousands of small files. For most use cases the difference isn't big, but it's still worth noting that it can be a big problem. 

[mariushm]

1 hour ago, JoostinOnline said:

When I did some work for a school I had Mac app installers on my flash drive. It took up several extra GB because they're made up of thousands of small files. For most use cases the difference isn't big, but it's still worth noting that it can be a big problem. 

That's why things like TAR  (archives without compression) or Zip / 7zip with ultra fast compression settings were invented. Literally takes seconds to pack folder in such "archives" and extracting them in temporary folders is also super easy since most operating systems have built in decompression (only Windows is retarded and supports only zip by default)