Hacking FAT32 vs. NTFS vs. WBFS - Which do you use?

[DeadlyFoez]

Thanx to the discussion in the "Devolution Speculation Thread" and everyone saying their things and going far off topic, I figured I'd make a new thread just for the point of the poll.

 

[emigre]

I use FAT32. It works competently.

 

[VashTS]

i use fat32. i used both a one point and realized how much it sucked for wii purposes. now all drives i manage for wii stuff are fat32. nuff said.

 

[pepxl]

Well i came from WBFS, so i was one of the users who wasnt willing to spend the time transferring games until wbfs2fat was made then i quickly switched, best overall decision i made in the end, especially now i dont have 2 partitions FAT32(10GB)+WBFS(980GB) and only a single FAT32(1TB) partition.

You should of added what FS they came from.

WBFS To FAT32

 

[DeadlyFoez]

You should of added what FS they came from.

I figured there was enough and I didn't want to add anymore stuff to the poll.

But yeah, I started off as WBFS and after about 2 years I finally switched to FAT32.

 

[RupeeClock]

I only use a 16gb USB flash drive, formatted to WBFS and used together with WBFS manager.
For how often I end up using my wii these days, it suffices.

 

[Elrinth]

I used WBFS because my wii didn't recognize my usb drive first. but it was probably just because it was put in top usb-port and not bottom. now I regret using WBFS. because it's 1 tb hdd and i got like 4 wii isos there ._.

 

[pepxl]

I used WBFS because my wii didn't recognize my usb drive first. but it was probably just because it was put in top usb-port and not bottom. now I regret using WBFS. because it's 1 tb hdd and i got like 4 wii isos there ._.

try this, excellent lil tool

http://gbatemp.net/topic/291320-wbfs2fatpy/

 

[Elrinth]

I'll give that tool a test tonight.

 

[pokefloote]

NTFS

file size limit on fat32 keeps me away from it.

 

[G0dLiKe]

still using wbfs for my games, fat32 for homebrew stuff

so fat32+wbfs for me.

 

[Maxternal]

I used to use WBFS but when I realized loaders supported FAT32 I switched.
The ONLY thing that can't use a FAT32 partition with a /wbfs/ folder is uLoader (which can use FAT32 but it needs to be a /cios/ folder).
The only benefit I see in NTFS is the 4gb+ files and that is overcome by being able to split the files in the /wbfs/ folder.

The other "benefits" of NTFS or EXT# don't really amount to much to me.
SECURITY only seems to get in the way. If you want to protect it, they can just plug it into a computer that'll with software that'll ignore the security.
ENCRYPTION has no use on the Wii and kinda makes having a PORTABLE hard drive useless since only ONE computer will be able to read it outside of a domain network.
COMPRESSION is not all that useful when .wbfs files are already compressed and have the disk padding removed.

I can see if you using the disk for other 4gb+ files aside from Wii games but that's not my case


Edit : Sorry, I've been corrected. They're just not very compressible by standard means.

 

[DeadlyFoez]

COMPRESSION is not all that useful when .wbfs files are already compressed and have the disk padding removed.

What? They are not compressed.

 

[Helsionium]

In the beginning, I used WBFS, later switched to FAT32 (only for a short time) and finally to NTFS. I prefer NTFS mainly because of the 4GB file size limit of FAT32 and because it is the native filesystem of all of my computers.

The discussion would be pointless if all applications supported disks with multiple partitions irrespective of their order. E.g. if I'm not mistaken, the FAT32 partition must be first for the Homebrew Channel, this is a pointless limitation. It wouldn't matter if Devolution/Dios Mios only supported FAT32 if all you had to do was create a second partition.

 

[Wizerzak]

I use my external HDD for more than just my Wii (it's 1TB) and store some pretty big files on there. Because of this mine's formatted to NTFS.

 

[Hunter X]

NTFS, because Windows and the Wii don't support HFS+ and I keep stuff on my drive that are greater than the 4GB limit of FAT32.

 

[Maxternal]

COMPRESSION is not all that useful when .wbfs files are already compressed and have the disk padding removed.

What? They are not compressed.

That's weird. They seem the same size as a CISO image or as an ISO image in a compressed file and on my computer's hard drive (which IS compressed NTFS) there seems to be little or no difference between the "size" and "size on disk" entries for them. I guess I just always took it for granted that they used some sort of compression. Maybe it's just that game developers just usually use some sort of compression on THEIR files when the put them on the disk or they use something else that's not very compressible.
One way or another the NTFS compression doesn't seem to do much to them.

 

[Coto]

FAT/ FAT 32 because it's cross platform, stable and if you have fragmentation, just run chkdsk / scandisk.

EXT2 also, but you NEED linux.

 

[Maxternal]

I've heard that WBFS has problems with fragmentation but when I used to use it I added and removed games so often that it should have been totally shot but it still played the games fine.
Might this be a problem that some software improperly implements it and can't deal with fragmentation?

 

[crwys]

COMPRESSION is not all that useful when .wbfs files are already compressed and have the disk padding removed.

What? They are not compressed.

That's weird. They seem the same size as a CISO image or as an ISO image in a compressed file and on my computer's hard drive (which IS compressed NTFS) there seems to be little or no difference between the "size" and "size on disk" entries for them. I guess I just always took it for granted that they used some sort of compression. Maybe it's just that game developers just usually use some sort of compression on THEIR files when the put them on the disk or they use something else that's not very compressible.
One way or another the NTFS compression doesn't seem to do much to them.

He is saying that you are completely wrong.
CISO, WBFS files are not compressed. iSO's in ZIP or RAR files are compressed.
WBFS and CISO just remove the junk data,(All those pretty little 0's that are put in when they have nothing left to make the game 4.37gb) they aren't compressed.

I use FAT32. It kind of surprises me that people still use WBFS.