On Sat, 28 Jun 2008 14:48:40 +1200 Nick Rout <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Just looking for a little guidance on the best way to partition and > format a 160G 2.5 inch USB2 portable hard drive. > > Most flash disks are formatted with some version of FAT, for maximum > compatibility and of course FAT works fine with linux. But I am > confused about maximum filesystem size on FAT partitions, and I don't > want a whole lot of small partitions. Any of the linux filesystems > will reduce compatibility with windows machines. > > Brilliant war stories anyone? The problems come with the original fat16 filesystem, where the max file size is 4GB ( well, technically -1 byte ). This is what is used on most sd cards and what cameras usually understand - which now means that a lot of redevelopment needs to be done for camers, etc firmware! FAT32 is what most people now mean in the computing context, which has a max file size in the terabyte range, so nothing to worry about there. If you want to create a fat16 partition for extra flexibility, then mkdosfs -F 16 /dev/sdnx for fat32, then it-s -F 32 ( I can't remember which the default Filesize is, so always supply it... ) hth, Steve -- Steve Holdoway <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
