When did large external hard drives come formatted with NTFS?

[PC Guy]

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?

 

[Flasherly]

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.

 

[NT]

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

 

[Flasherly]

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.