Hacking SD FAT/FAT32/NTFS

[elimist]

My sd card is currently has a FAT filesystem. Are there any programs that require it to be fat? If not, I want to convert to fat32. I have also heard that some stuff doesn't work on ntfs because of ios limitation. can't it use an ios that suports ntfs?

 

[Szalkow]

I can't think of any specific reasons, but I know that FAT32 (especially as it comes on pre-formatted SD cards) causes problems with a lot of homebrew. It's far safer to use FAT/FAT16 since it plays nice with everything. Given the small size of SD cards there's little advantage to using FAT32.

There are no IOSes other than the cIOSes which include NTFS libraries, and the majority of homebrew (outside of backup loaders) does not use these. Formatting an SD card in NTFS is unheard of anyway.

 

[Digital1980]

I can't think of any specific reasons, but I know that FAT32 (especially as it comes on pre-formatted SD cards) causes problems with a lot of homebrew. It's far safer to use FAT/FAT16 since it plays nice with everything. Given the small size of SD cards there's little advantage to using FAT32.

There are no IOSes other than the cIOSes which include NTFS libraries, and the majority of homebrew (outside of backup loaders) does not use these. Formatting an SD card in NTFS is unheard of anyway.

You JUST heard about it. It's silly though.

Really FAT is better to use than FAT32? I didn't think it made a difference. I haven't had any known issues but I'll remember that for the future.

 

[Szalkow]

If you format to FAT32 using a recommended SD card formatting tool (there are a few programs floating around that can do it better than Windows, none of which I have links to) it should be fine.

 

[C.S.I.]

Never had an issue with using FAT32.

Formatting as NTFS also consumes more space on the device, so simply not worth it.

 

[elimist]

Never had an issue with using FAT32.

Formatting as NTFS also consumes more space on the device, so simply not worth it.

I thought that fat32/ntfs saves space... something about cluster sizes...

 

[C.S.I.]

Correct, applies to the data then saved/stored on the card.

BUT, the actual act of formatting a device as NTFS consumes a lot more space than FAT32.

Mind you, that was in the days of floppys. Might have to read up a bit more before I comment any further =)

Anyways, with SD cards, I would stick with FAT32. If fact, with the Wii in general, I would stick to FAT32.

Edit: Just ran a simple test.

Formatted a 1GB (976MB) SD Card.

NTFS - 512Bytes Allocation Unit = 32.8MB Used, 943MB Free
FAT32 - 512Bytes Allocation Unit = 512Bytes Used, 960MB Free.

The space is consumed by the NTFS's use of mutiple MFT's etc.

 

[elimist]

I have also heard that smaller cluster sizes(ntfs/fat i thimk...) have less performance and more fragmentation. Then again, fragmentation dosent really matter on flash memory... does anyone know the actual performance/space/compatibility tradeoff?

 

[Szalkow]

In general, FAT16 has the fastest file retrieval time since it does not fragment; of NTFS and FAT32, FAT32 is slowest. NTFS has the best write times since it can search free space faster; FAT16 is marginally better than FAT32. NTFS has the best directory handling, which won't matter unless you have list thousands of files and subfolders. In low-memory systems, NTFS has the worst caching speed, but this won't matter when you're using a Wii and your files are probably under a couple dozen megabytes.

NTFS is arguably best for USB/SD loading if that's your thing, but for anything else FAT16 is superior. FAT32 is only handy for large file operations, which is not typically an issue with homebrew.

 

[elimist]

I think I will stick with with fat 16 for now although speed isin't much of an issue. btw I have a sandisk extreme iii card.