Fat32 partition size limit (OT in uk.d-i-y)

Just (today) bought a Verbatim 1TB USB-3[1] external drive for general
backup purposes, plus transferring data between computers - all Windoze,
but a mixture of XP, W7-32bit and W7-64bit.

It came formatted as Fat32, and there appears to be a single partition
occupying the whole of its 1TB capacity.

However, the on-disk manual which came with it seems to suggest that
Fat32 partitions are limited to a maximum of 32GB. I know that to be
untrue because I've got a 64GB thumb drive which is formatted as Fat32 -
and that's definitely got more than 32GB of data on it. Some sources
seem to suggest that the default Windoze format command cannot format
more than 32GB at a time in Fat32 but there are third-party alternatives
which can.

Can anyone shed any light on this please?

The manual suggests that users may want to create multiple partitions on
the disk - possibly a mixture of Fat32 (for maximum transportability)
and NTFS (for fewer size - presumably both partition size *and* file
size - limitations). If I understand it correctly, it's telling me to
delete the existing partition - so the whole thing becomes unallocated
space - and then create the required new partitions. Questions:
a) is this necessary?
b) if I delete the existing partition, presumably the documents and
software which came on the disk will be lost unless I copy it all
elsewhere first?
c) If I create multiple partitions (say, 1 fat32 primary, 1 Extended -
containing several NTFS logical partitions) and give each one a drive
letter, will the drive letters change depending on which system it's
connected to at any one time - or do I need to choose drive letters
which won't conflict with those in use on *any* of the systems to which
I will connect it?
d) if I back up my operating systems, using something like Paragon
Rescue & Backup software (which is stand-alone, and boots from a CD)
will that software be able to see all the partitions? [My current
thoughts are that I will use a separate partition for each system I'm
backing up - so that each one is self-contained].

I think I know broadly what I want to achieve, but I feel that I need to
understand all the issues before starting to muck about with this new disk.

Any constructive comments will be greatly appreciated.



[1] It's backwards compatible with USB-2, which is how I shall be using
it - in the short term, at any rate.
--
Cheers,
Roger
____________
Please reply to Newsgroup. Whilst email address is valid, it is seldom
checked.

Any constructive comments will be greatly appreciated.

Unless you foresee that you will be using it with something that doesn't
support NTFS, I'd just repartition it as a single NTFS partition and be
done with it.

Was scratching my head the other day trying to copy an 8Gb file to an
empty 16Gb USB stick that I'd forgotten was formatted Fat32, because I'd
used it with the TV which doesn't support NTFS

On 30/10/2014 21:38, Roger Mills wrote:
However, the on-disk manual which came with it seems to suggest that
Fat32 partitions are limited to a maximum of 32GB. I know that to be
untrue because I've got a 64GB thumb drive which is formatted as Fat32 -
and that's definitely got more than 32GB of data on it.

I thought the 32GB limit was from within Windows 2000 - not a universal
limit.

--
Rod

I did note your comment about backing up different OSes to different
partitions, if that's your preference then Windows should assign them a
drive letter as necessary when the disk is mounted.

Personally, different directories are good enough for me, while
different partitions may offer some protection against certain kinds of
disk corruption, ICBA with having to remember which partition relates to
what

On 30/10/2014 21:38, Roger Mills wrote:

Just (today) bought a Verbatim 1TB USB-3[1] external drive for general
backup purposes, plus transferring data between computers - all Windoze,
but a mixture of XP, W7-32bit and W7-64bit.

It came formatted as Fat32, and there appears to be a single partition
occupying the whole of its 1TB capacity.

However, the on-disk manual which came with it seems to suggest that
Fat32 partitions are limited to a maximum of 32GB. I know that to be
untrue because I've got a 64GB thumb drive which is formatted as Fat32 -
and that's definitely got more than 32GB of data on it. Some sources
seem to suggest that the default Windoze format command cannot format
more than 32GB at a time in Fat32 but there are third-party alternatives
which can.

Can anyone shed any light on this please?

Yup partitions can be larger than 32G, but the windows 7 format program
can't produce them.

The manual suggests that users may want to create multiple partitions on
the disk - possibly a mixture of Fat32 (for maximum transportability)
and NTFS (for fewer size - presumably both partition size *and* file
size - limitations). If I understand it correctly, it's telling me to
delete the existing partition - so the whole thing becomes unallocated
space - and then create the required new partitions. Questions:
a) is this necessary?

Not really. Depends a bit on what you want to store on it. Large FAT
partitions can waste a fair amount of space if you are storing lots of
small files.

b) if I delete the existing partition, presumably the documents and
software which came on the disk will be lost unless I copy it all
elsewhere first?

Correct

c) If I create multiple partitions (say, 1 fat32 primary, 1 Extended -
containing several NTFS logical partitions) and give each one a drive
letter, will the drive letters change depending on which system it's
connected to at any one time - or do I need to choose drive letters

Yes.

Recent versions of windows can also cope with multiple primary
partitions, which is usually simpler than titting about with extended
partitions.

which won't conflict with those in use on *any* of the systems to which
I will connect it?

Generally it will sort it out when it mounts them, and allocate
available drive letters.

(note with NTFS partitions you don't have to allocate them letters - you
can mount them unix style in a folder tree elsewhere)

d) if I back up my operating systems, using something like Paragon
Rescue & Backup software (which is stand-alone, and boots from a CD)
will that software be able to see all the partitions? [My current
thoughts are that I will use a separate partition for each system I'm
backing up - so that each one is self-contained].

Probably - so long as it can see NTFS partitions on external media.

I think I know broadly what I want to achieve, but I feel that I need to
understand all the issues before starting to muck about with this new disk.

Any constructive comments will be greatly appreciated.

[1] It's backwards compatible with USB-2, which is how I shall be using
it - in the short term, at any rate.


--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

On 2014-10-30 17:38, Roger Mills wrote:

However, the on-disk manual which came with it seems to suggest that
Fat32 partitions are limited to a maximum of 32GB. I know that to be
untrue because I've got a 64GB thumb drive which is formatted as Fat32 -
and that's definitely got more than 32GB of data on it. Some sources
seem to suggest that the default Windoze format command cannot format
more than 32GB at a time in Fat32 but there are third-party alternatives
which can.

See here for one of those alternatives:
http://www.ridgecrop.demon.co.uk/ind...at32format.htm


--
! _\|/_ Sylvain /
! (o o) Member-+-David-Suzuki-Foundation/EFF/Planetary-Society-+-
oO-( )-Oo When I grow up, I wanna be like Riker! -Bashir

On Thu, 30 Oct 2014 21:38:46 +0000, Roger Mills
wrote:

Just (today) bought a Verbatim 1TB USB-3[1] external drive for general
backup purposes, plus transferring data between computers - all Windoze,
but a mixture of XP, W7-32bit and W7-64bit.

It came formatted as Fat32, and there appears to be a single partition
occupying the whole of its 1TB capacity.

That does seem to be a common default pre-formatted FS choice for USB
drives. I believe this is chosen as a default since just about any
other OS can read and write to FAT32 volumes, even Apple Macs!


However, the on-disk manual which came with it seems to suggest that
Fat32 partitions are limited to a maximum of 32GB. I know that to be
untrue because I've got a 64GB thumb drive which is formatted as Fat32 -
and that's definitely got more than 32GB of data on it. Some sources
seem to suggest that the default Windoze format command cannot format
more than 32GB at a time in Fat32 but there are third-party alternatives
which can.

AFAICR, even the version of FDISK and the FORMAT commands that came
with winME could create larger than 32GB FAT32 partitions. I think the
limit was the maximum LBA addressing limit (128GB, ISTR) inherent in
win9x OSes.

WinNT inherited a 32GB limited version of its FAT32 partitioning
utility all the way from win2k and up. The limit wasn't an OS one for
win2kSP3 and above (with a simple registry edit to enable large LBA
support - needed even for SP4 - large LBA support for winXP didn't
become automatically enabled until SP2 or SP3).

I think Microsoft didn't want to encourage the use of large FAT32
volumes so they didn't update their partitioning tool as a matter of
deliberate 'neglect'.

As you know, there are plenty of third party partition management
tools which will happily create FAT32 partitions in excess of 1 TB if
that is your desire.

If, as you've implied, you're never ever going to attach it to an
Apple Mac or a PC with a windows version less than 2000, you won't
require FAT32 in any shape or form so you might as well delete the
FAT32 partition and reformat it as NTFS.

If you're going to use it purely as a data store, you might as well
install a single partition covering the whole of the disk space.
Further, if you want to avoid the risk of accidently confusing the
boot process on the connected machine or eliminate the risk of
accidently formatting it as a boot disk by forgetting to disconnect it
when rebooting or re-installing an OS, I'd suggest you only create an
extended partition in which to add your single logical disk volume.

Although the drive is small enough not to rely on an Advanced 4k
sector Format, I'd check on this before you partition it just in case
the disk uses AF sectoring to achieve its capacity on lower density
media by virtue of the slight increase in capacity that results from
the reduced format overhead per kilobyte of disk space.

One way to be certain about this is to install Paragon's Alignment
tool so you can just prep the disk in the usual way with diskmanager
and check the result _before_ you start using it to store data.

If the Alignment tool shows it to be in need of alignment, you can
use the tool to adjust the partition in just a minute or two versus
hours and hours of runtime when the partition already contains a
collection of files.

HTH
--
J B Good

Johny B Good wrote:
On Thu, 30 Oct 2014 21:38:46 +0000, Roger Mills
wrote:

Just (today) bought a Verbatim 1TB USB-3[1] external drive for general
backup purposes, plus transferring data between computers - all Windoze,
but a mixture of XP, W7-32bit and W7-64bit.

It came formatted as Fat32, and there appears to be a single partition
occupying the whole of its 1TB capacity.

That does seem to be a common default pre-formatted FS choice for USB
drives. I believe this is chosen as a default since just about any
other OS can read and write to FAT32 volumes, even Apple Macs!


Another possibility, is FAT32 may not have the level of patent
protection that NTFS and ExFAT do. You'd need to check the articles
on all three of those, to get a feel for how "safe" it is to ship product
with FAT32 on it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat32

(See "Challenges and lawsuits")

"Developers of open source software have designed methods
intended to circumvent Microsoft's patents."

On a 1TB drive, FAT32 is not the best choice, since the maximum file
size is ~4GB. To fill the whole space, you'd need at least 250 files,
as no file can be bigger than 4GB. This is a problem if you put .vhd
files, .iso files, .mrimg (Macrium) files or Acronis backup files. As
many backup programs can easily make a file bigger than that limit.
Even a download could end up bigger than that.

The 32GB limit is Microsoft imposed, as a "feature" of the OS. In
the opinion of Microsoft, they decided that 32GB was "big enough".
Whereas the definition of the file system, allows a FAT32 partition
to be 2TB. To be able to format a freshly declared 2TB partition,
you could try the Ridgecrop formatter, as it has no issues with
helping you out. Whereas Microsoft will simply remove FAT32 from
the format menu, if the partition you want to format is too big.

The file allocation table (FAT) size is likely a function of the
size of the partition, so doing that also causes a rather large
FAT. But with the big machines today (lots of RAM, lots of address
space), that's probably not a big deal. A fifteen year old machine
might have an issue, due to "slow everything" in hardware.

Paul

Roger Mills wrote on 10/30/2014 5:38 PM:
If I understand it correctly, it's telling me to delete the existing
partition - so the whole thing becomes unallocated space - and then
create the required new partitions. Questions:
a) is this necessary?

If you want NTFS and don't want to lose the data just convert the format:


At the command prompt, type the following, where drive letter is the
drive that you want to convert:
convert drive letter: /fs:ntfs
For example, type the following command to convert drive E to NTFS:
convert e: /fs:ntfs

See this for additional info.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307881

Roger Mills wrote

Just (today) bought a Verbatim 1TB USB-3[1] external drive for general
backup purposes, plus transferring data between computers - all Windoze,
but a mixture of XP, W7-32bit and W7-64bit.

It came formatted as Fat32, and there appears to be a single partition
occupying the whole of its 1TB capacity.

However, the on-disk manual which came with it seems to suggest that Fat32
partitions are limited to a maximum of 32GB.

No they aren't. That is just the biggest that the latest Wins will
format FAT32, but its completely trivia to use a different formatter.

I know that to be untrue because I've got a 64GB thumb drive which is
formatted as Fat32 - and that's definitely got more than 32GB of data on
it.

Yeah, I ran a 1TB drive FAT32 for a while and changed
to HPFS when I replaced the VCRs with a PVR because
there is no maximum file size that matters with HPFS.

Some sources seem to suggest that the default Windoze format command
cannot format more than 32GB at a time in Fat32 but there are third-party
alternatives which can.

That is correct, and the older Win formatter can too.

Can anyone shed any light on this please?

That's correct.

The manual suggests that users may want to create multiple partitions on
the disk - possibly a mixture of Fat32 (for maximum transportability) and
NTFS (for fewer size - presumably both partition size *and* file size -
limitations).

Correct on both counts. And the last isnt academic if you use
it on a PVR etc. While some will auto split the files with a FAT32
formatted drive, its more convenient to not have split files.

It isnt hard to get files bigger than FAT32 supports.

If I understand it correctly, it's telling me to delete the existing
partition - so the whole thing becomes unallocated space - and then create
the required new partitions.

Yes.

Questions:
a) is this necessary?

Not if you don't care about the maximum file length question,
but on the other hand, there is no real downside with formatting
it all HPFS unless you need to use it as an external drive for a
set top box that will do PVR, some don't support HPFS.

b) if I delete the existing partition, presumably the documents and
software which came on the disk will be lost unless I copy it all
elsewhere first?

Yep.

c) If I create multiple partitions (say, 1 fat32 primary, 1 Extended -
containing several NTFS logical partitions) and give each one a drive
letter, will the drive letters change depending on which system it's
connected to at any one time

Yes, particularly if the systems have different numbers of partitions
on them.

- or do I need to choose drive letters which won't conflict with those in
use on *any* of the systems to which I will connect it?

You can't actually force a drive letter to be used with all Wins.

d) if I back up my operating systems, using something like Paragon Rescue
& Backup software (which is stand-alone, and boots from a CD) will that
software be able to see all the partitions?

Yes.

[My current thoughts are that I will use a separate partition for each
system I'm backing up - so that each one is self-contained].

That isnt a great approach because the size of the backup varys
over time so you can end up with the free space scattered over
the partitions.

Its better to have a single partition and specify the
system its the backup of using the file name instead.

That way you don't have to fart around changing the partition
sizes over time and the free space doesn't get scattered over
the partitions.

I think I know broadly what I want to achieve, but I feel that I need to
understand all the issues before starting to muck about with this new
disk.

Yeah, particularly given that once you have it partitioned
and have the backup files on it, its not that easy to repartition
the drive WHEN you discover you got the partition size wrong.

Any constructive comments will be greatly appreciated.

[1] It's backwards compatible with USB-2, which is how I shall be using
it - in the short term, at any rate.

Yeah, its an important consideration. When
USB3 can be used, its noticeably much faster.

"polygonum" wrote in message
...
On 30/10/2014 21:38, Roger Mills wrote:
However, the on-disk manual which came with it seems to suggest that
Fat32 partitions are limited to a maximum of 32GB. I know that to be
untrue because I've got a 64GB thumb drive which is formatted as Fat32 -
and that's definitely got more than 32GB of data on it.

I thought the 32GB limit was from within Windows 2000

And later Wins as well.

- not a universal limit.

Correct, but the maximum file size it can handle is universal.

"Johny B Good" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 30 Oct 2014 21:38:46 +0000, Roger Mills
wrote:

Just (today) bought a Verbatim 1TB USB-3[1] external drive for general
backup purposes, plus transferring data between computers - all Windoze,
but a mixture of XP, W7-32bit and W7-64bit.

It came formatted as Fat32, and there appears to be a single partition
occupying the whole of its 1TB capacity.

That does seem to be a common default pre-formatted FS choice for USB
drives. I believe this is chosen as a default since just about any
other OS can read and write to FAT32 volumes, even Apple Macs!


However, the on-disk manual which came with it seems to suggest that
Fat32 partitions are limited to a maximum of 32GB. I know that to be
untrue because I've got a 64GB thumb drive which is formatted as Fat32 -
and that's definitely got more than 32GB of data on it. Some sources
seem to suggest that the default Windoze format command cannot format
more than 32GB at a time in Fat32 but there are third-party alternatives
which can.

AFAICR, even the version of FDISK and the FORMAT commands that came
with winME could create larger than 32GB FAT32 partitions. I think the
limit was the maximum LBA addressing limit (128GB, ISTR) inherent in
win9x OSes.

WinNT inherited a 32GB limited version of its FAT32 partitioning
utility all the way from win2k and up. The limit wasn't an OS one for
win2kSP3 and above (with a simple registry edit to enable large LBA
support - needed even for SP4 - large LBA support for winXP didn't
become automatically enabled until SP2 or SP3).

I think Microsoft didn't want to encourage the use of large FAT32
volumes so they didn't update their partitioning tool as a matter of
deliberate 'neglect'.

As you know, there are plenty of third party partition management
tools which will happily create FAT32 partitions in excess of 1 TB if
that is your desire.

If, as you've implied, you're never ever going to attach it to an
Apple Mac or a PC with a windows version less than 2000, you won't
require FAT32 in any shape or form so you might as well delete the
FAT32 partition and reformat it as NTFS.

There are some of the more primitive set top boxes etc that
only support FAT32.

If you're going to use it purely as a data store, you might as well
install a single partition covering the whole of the disk space.
Further, if you want to avoid the risk of accidently confusing the
boot process on the connected machine or eliminate the risk of
accidently formatting it as a boot disk by forgetting to disconnect it
when rebooting or re-installing an OS, I'd suggest you only create an
extended partition in which to add your single logical disk volume.

Although the drive is small enough not to rely on an Advanced 4k
sector Format, I'd check on this before you partition it just in case
the disk uses AF sectoring to achieve its capacity on lower density
media by virtue of the slight increase in capacity that results from
the reduced format overhead per kilobyte of disk space.

One way to be certain about this is to install Paragon's Alignment
tool so you can just prep the disk in the usual way with diskmanager
and check the result _before_ you start using it to store data.

If the Alignment tool shows it to be in need of alignment, you can
use the tool to adjust the partition in just a minute or two versus
hours and hours of runtime when the partition already contains a
collection of files.

HTH

In message , Lee
writes:
I did note your comment about backing up different OSes to different
partitions, if that's your preference then Windows should assign them a
drive letter as necessary when the disk is mounted.

Personally, different directories are good enough for me, while
different partitions may offer some protection against certain kinds of
disk corruption, ICBA with having to remember which partition relates
to what

You can always give partitions names too (-:
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

All I ask is to _prove_ that money can't make me happy.

In message , Rod Speed
writes:
Roger Mills wrote
[]
[My current thoughts are that I will use a separate partition for
each system I'm backing up - so that each one is self-contained].

That isnt a great approach because the size of the backup varys

Well, depending on whether you do clones or images, and whether
compression is on if you do clones, but on the whole, yes.

over time so you can end up with the free space scattered over
the partitions.

Its better to have a single partition and specify the
system its the backup of using the file name instead.

That way you don't have to fart around changing the partition
sizes over time and the free space doesn't get scattered over
the partitions.

Why is scattered free space a problem ...
[]
Yeah, particularly given that once you have it partitioned
and have the backup files on it, its not that easy to repartition
the drive WHEN you discover you got the partition size wrong.
[]
.... except that (-:! [_Could_ be that Roger intends to make partitions
the same size as the systems being backed.]
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

All I ask is to _prove_ that money can't make me happy.

J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote
Rod Speed wrote
Roger Mills wrote

[My current thoughts are that I will use a separate partition for each
system I'm backing up - so that each one is self-contained].

That isnt a great approach because the size of the backup varys

Well, depending on whether you do clones or images,

The size of the backup does vary with both approaches.

and whether compression is on if you do clones,

You'd be mad not to with more than one clone on the drive.

but on the whole, yes.

over time so you can end up with the free space scattered over the
partitions.

Its better to have a single partition and specify the
system its the backup of using the file name instead.

That way you don't have to fart around changing the partition sizes over
time and the free space doesn't get scattered over the partitions.

Why is scattered free space a problem ...

You end up with less space to write another backup to.

Yeah, particularly given that once you have it partitioned
and have the backup files on it, its not that easy to repartition
the drive WHEN you discover you got the partition size wrong.

... except that (-:! [_Could_ be that Roger intends to make partitions the
same size as the systems being backed.]

It makes more sense to compress the clone so you can get more on the drive.