Hacking FAT16 vs FAT32

[iza]

but i'm still kinda new to this, so what is the differance between fat16 and fat32 and what are the advantages of both?

 

[dreary79]

fat32 is newer and faster. It was developed to be faster and allow for larger file and volume sizes. fat32 should be in all respects better than fat16. Some carts don't support fat32; only fat16.

 

[iza]

mind if i ask another ignorant question?
Is Fastboot (4X) inherantly better than 1X or does it cause errors in some roms?
Sorry, i'm still new to all this, i promise, i'm not trying to be a bother.

 

[solojerry]

I'm a little new myself - I have a M3 Mini SD. From what I can tell the 1x, 4x, normal all work the same for me. I use a RiData 150x speed mini SD.

Everything loads fast and plays without a hitch. I'm actually using FAT16 at the moment because I heard it might help something which I forgot atm.

You'll most likely be perfectly fine with FAT32 and if it causes a problem later just back up your card - reformat and dump all the data back on.


BTW - I've seen 4x work for every game so far except Megaman ZX - which for some crazy reason glitches when you pick up and use the 2nd (green) suit. 4x works perfectly every other time though.

In megaman I used "safe mode" or something.

 

[tama_mog]

mind if i ask another ignorant question?
Is Fastboot (4X) inherantly better than 1X or does it cause errors in some roms?
Sorry, i'm still new to all this, i promise, i'm not trying to be a bother.

Supposed to be DMA reading speed, so yes 4x (hidden 8x enabled in 27a if game supports it) is faster and can cause problems on some roms. Notice the nice loading red bar if you don't use fastboot (aka if you select normal writing mode). But yes from what I've seen the game runs the same afterwards. Try to look on the m3wiki compatability list to see what roms have problems with 4x.

 

[Zap]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FAT32

wikipedia.com is your friend next to google.

 

[larvi]

I don't think there are any inherant performance advantages to Fat32 vs Fat16, in fact the reverse may be true on smaller partition sizes due to the smaller code overhead of Fat16 but it's probably insignificant. The biggest advantage of Fat 32 is the ability to create partitions over 2GB in size which up until recently hasn't been an issue for most flash memory cards.

 

[outphase]

Anyone know of a FAT sorting app for fat32? FATSort works for fat16, but not 32.