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View Full Version : Why the hell do they sell external HDDs as FAT32?



cptrohn
November 17th, 2009, 09:07 PM
formatted into FAT32?


Just bought a new one today and the first thing I had to do was format it into NTFS (would go with Ext4 but the mountpoints are just a pain to deal with)


I should have just bought a darn HDD and an enclosure...

Roasted
November 17th, 2009, 09:10 PM
I wonder the same thing. Flash drives are understandable, but external hard drives that are getting bigger and bigger... doesn't make sense.

What's up with the mount points? I run 3 via fstab with EXT4 just fine without issues.

-grubby
November 17th, 2009, 09:11 PM
1) OS X can't write to NTFS.
2) Old versions of Windows don't even know what NTFS is.

That's why.

cptrohn
November 17th, 2009, 09:12 PM
1) OS X can't write to NTFS.
2) Old versions of Windows don't even know what NTFS is.

That's why.

Ok, that makes sense then.

cptrohn
November 17th, 2009, 09:13 PM
I wonder the same thing. Flash drives are understandable, but external hard drives that are getting bigger and bigger... doesn't make sense.

What's up with the mount points? I run 3 via fstab with EXT4 just fine without issues.

Yeah but I don't even have to run fstab with NTFS.... just plug and play.

FuturePilot
November 17th, 2009, 09:20 PM
Yeah but I don't even have to run fstab with NTFS.... just plug and play.

I don't have my external drive in fstab and it's Ext3. Plug it in and it mounts, done.

RiceMonster
November 17th, 2009, 09:21 PM
I don't have my external drive in fstab and it's Ext3. Plug it in and it mounts, done.

Shouldn't this be the case for any file system supported by the kernel if you're running HAL/DeviceKit?

FuturePilot
November 17th, 2009, 09:23 PM
Shouldn't this be the case for any file system supported by the kernel if you're running HAL/DeviceKit?

Yes. But the OP made it sound like it was an issue with Ext4

HappyFeet
November 17th, 2009, 09:31 PM
Yeah but I don't even have to run fstab with NTFS.... just plug and play.

Exactly. That's what I do.

Roasted
November 17th, 2009, 09:38 PM
Yeah but I don't even have to run fstab with NTFS.... just plug and play.

So does ext3 and ext4. They auto mount to a generic folder, just as ntfs does. I have a 160gb external drive with ext3 and when I plug it in to my Ubuntu Jaunty PC on my desk here, it auto mounts just fine.

You only need to mess with fstab if you need the drives to mount automatically upon boot. My 3 drives I spoke about are backup drives... which I want to mount automatically with my system boot, hence why I use fstab in that case.

phrizek
November 17th, 2009, 09:48 PM
I always buy an enclosure + hard drive if I need an external. Much cheaper that way and no strange formatting issues.

Mike'sHardLinux
November 17th, 2009, 09:58 PM
I am still curious what issues the OP was having with EXT4 on the external drive. As others have already stated, with an external drive, you shouldn't have to mess with mount points.

blueshiftoverwatch
November 17th, 2009, 11:34 PM
1) OS X can't write to NTFS.
2) Old versions of Windows don't even know what NTFS is.

That's why.
That's why my 750GB external HD is formatted FAT32.

benj1
November 17th, 2009, 11:44 PM
isnt it because microsoft would want money if they used NTFS but if they use FAT32 they don't (or is that just FAT16?(it could still be a lower license fee i suppose))

markp1989
November 18th, 2009, 12:25 AM
1) OS X can't write to NTFS.
2) Old versions of Windows don't even know what NTFS is.

That's why.

alot of older versions of windows need drivers before they will even reconize an external hard drive, but that points still makes sence :D

Roasted
November 18th, 2009, 02:47 PM
1) OS X can't write to NTFS.
2) Old versions of Windows don't even know what NTFS is.

That's why.

LOL. OSX. Who runs OSX anymore anyways. :P :P

Hallvor
November 18th, 2009, 03:02 PM
That's why my 750GB external HD is formatted FAT32.

Why didn`t you use ext3? It will fragment less and you can have files larger than 4 GB. If you need to access it from Windows, just install the fs-driver and it will read/write to ext3 flawlessly.

blueshiftoverwatch
November 18th, 2009, 04:57 PM
Why didn`t you use ext3? It will fragment less and you can have files larger than 4 GB. If you need to access it from Windows, just install the fs-driver and it will read/write to ext3 flawlessly.
I don't care about fragmenting because 90% of the files that get put on the hard drive are never moved/changed. But the 4GB file size limit would present a problem if I want to backup my virtual hard drives onto it. I'll have to change it over.

Do the drivers that allow compatibility with ext3 work on Windows 7? Once I do that I'll just put the Windows-Ext3 drivers on my flash drive so I'll have access to them everywhere.

aysiu
November 18th, 2009, 04:59 PM
1) OS X can't write to NTFS.
2) Old versions of Windows don't even know what NTFS is.

That's why.
Added to that, there isn't a great urgency for most people to switch over to anything else.

The only real limitation to FAT32 is not being able to store files larger than 4 GB. Unless you use a lot of virtual machines or back up long, high definition movies, you probably don't have a lot of files that large.

RiceMonster
November 18th, 2009, 05:08 PM
LOL. OSX. Who runs OSX anymore anyways. :P :P

Are you serious?

t0p
November 18th, 2009, 05:47 PM
Heh. I saw the title of this thread in the listing and thought "You what!?" Yeah, why the hell do they sell external HDDs? What possible use is an external HDD? LOL.

Surely I'm not the only one?

Marlonsm
November 18th, 2009, 05:58 PM
They use FAT32 because pretty much all computers can read/write to it.
And if you know about it's limitations it's likely that you also know how to reformat it to other FS. Most people won't get even close to storing files bigger than 4Gbs.


Heh. I saw the title of this thread in the listing and thought "You what!?" Yeah, why the hell do they sell external HDDs? What possible use is an external HDD? LOL.

Surely I'm not the only one?

No, you're not the only one...

FuturePilot
November 18th, 2009, 06:44 PM
Why didn`t you use ext3? It will fragment less and you can have files larger than 4 GB. If you need to access it from Windows, just install the fs-driver and it will read/write to ext3 flawlessly.
Not if you used any recent distro to format it. Just about all distros these days default to formating Ext3 with an inode size of 256. The Windows Ext3 driver only works with an inode size of 128.


Heh. I saw the title of this thread in the listing and thought "You what!?" Yeah, why the hell do they sell external HDDs? What possible use is an external HDD? LOL.

Surely I'm not the only one?

I thought the same thing too. I thought I must be weird or something for using one of these external hard drive thingies.

aysiu
November 18th, 2009, 06:48 PM
I've retitled the thread to make more sense.

alphaniner
November 18th, 2009, 06:49 PM
You spoiled the fun!

Hallvor
November 18th, 2009, 10:36 PM
I don't care about fragmenting because 90% of the files that get put on the hard drive are never moved/changed. But the 4GB file size limit would present a problem if I want to backup my virtual hard drives onto it. I'll have to change it over.

Do the drivers that allow compatibility with ext3 work on Windows 7? Once I do that I'll just put the Windows-Ext3 drivers on my flash drive so I'll have access to them everywhere.

It does support Vista, so it probably works with Windows 7 too.

http://www.fs-driver.org

cptrohn
November 19th, 2009, 01:18 AM
I am still curious what issues the OP was having with EXT4 on the external drive. As others have already stated, with an external drive, you shouldn't have to mess with mount points.

I've never been able to do this in ext3 or ext4....