On Aug 11, 11:46 am, NT <meow2...@care2.com> wrote:
> On Aug 10, 10:10 pm, Flasherly <Flashe...@live.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> > On Aug 10, 9:32 am, PC Guy <P...@Guy.com> wrote:
>
> > > I realize that as hard drives continue to grow in size, that it becomes
> > > impractical to have the external drives (USB) come preformatted from the
> > > "factory" as FAT-32. And that some (or most, or all?) external hard
> > > drives (perhaps over some certain size) come pre-formatted as NTFS.
>
> > > But I always thought that NTFS was proprietary to Microsoft, and that
> > > Microsoft would presumably fight very hard to obtain some sort of
> > > royalty or license fee for every and any storage device that contains
> > > their "technology" - I believe they tried very hard to sue every device
> > > maker (digital cameras, mp3 players, etc) that used internal and
> > > removable flash memory media formatted as FAT32, claiming that they held
> > > the patents for FAT32 - but I think that issue is very fuzzy in the
> > > courts.
>
> > > So what is the status when it comes to large external hard drives and
> > > their pre-formatted file system configuration? Is there any
> > > rule-of-thumb when it comes to size and file-system? Has the industry
> > > adopted any such standards such as, if the drive is larger than 250 or
> > > 500 gb, then it's going to come pre-formatted as NTFS?
>
> > > Is Microsoft getting any sort of cut because of that?
>
> > Dunno about the MS end -- do 3rd party, commercial formatters such as
> > Partition Magic pay royalties to MS because they can format out NTFS?
> > How about Ranish PM - that's freeware, and yes they do and will...
>
> > Fat32, tho -- my magic number is around 100G. Not that I haven't
> > formatted them out higher -- just I've had later problems when making
> > the attempt. The problem is that they (the FAT table) turns to jello
> > easier (one big, misnamed mess) with a glitch (brownout, errant
> > program crash) -- stabler, anyway, formatted at less, least the way I
> > see it. According to the #rules#, however, anybody's welcome to push
> > it for what it's worth (I've already done enough crying over spilt
> > mugs of jello, thanks all the same)... Plus, I don't have a problem
> > getting around FAT32 drives on occasions I boot to an older OS than XP
> > (DOS 6.2 for Ghost images).
>
> > # "The 127.5-GB limit on FAT32 volumes imposed in Windows 98 no longer
> > applies to Windows Me. In Windows Me, using a cluster size of 32 KB, a
> > FAT32 volume can theoretically be about 8 terabytes. However, the 32-
> > bit fields in the partition table (and in the FAT32 boot sector) limit
> > the size of an individual volume (regardless of file system) on a
> > basic MBR disk using a sector size of 512 bytes to approximately 2
> > terabytes."
>
> > # "Although Windows 2000 and Windows XP Professional can mount FAT32
> > volumes of any size, Windows 2000 and Windows XP Professional can
> > format FAT32 volumes up to 32 GB only.
>
> My last 500G hdd came fat32 formatted. Fat32 has its vulnerabilities,
> as does ntfs.
>
> 98se can exceed its 137G hdd limitation by using a 3rd party patch for
> 48 bit LBA, assuming the PC's bios supports 48 bit LBA. LLXX's
> freeware patch works fine IME.
>
> NT
Probably when I was having trouble with pushing limits -- around 98.
Just kept in the habit of keeping them smaller. I've never bought a
HD that was pre-formatted, but all I've bought have been internal 3.5
s/p-ata drives. A mess of 200g "workhorse" seagates until the last
600g wd, which went straight away into ntfs for streaming on a
dedicated stereo/vid entertainment comp. What a monster.
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