Is the FAT32 format the most suitable for your pen drives?

When you buy a new pen drive, SSD or hard drive , it generally comes unformatted and you will have to format it and choose the most appropriate one. FAT32 is the most widespread and used format in removable drives, despite the fact that NTFS is much more modern, so which format is the most suitable?

The FAT32 format is one of the oldest and most widely used, and its creation dates from the time of Microsoft Windows 95, when it replaced the previous FAT16. Nowadays, most of us use NTFS as the format for removable drives, since it is much more modern although it has the disadvantage that it is only compatible with Windows operating system, so which format is the most suitable?

FAT32 format, advantages and disadvantages

The FAT32 format is the oldest of those used today, and it is also the most compatible as practically any USB device that supports data recognizes it without any problem. However, as it is so old it also has certain limitations that make it unfeasible in modern computing, such as the fact that it does not support storage of files of more than 4 GB of space .

A FAT32 formatted pen drive, SSD or hard drive supports a maximum capacity per volume of up to 8TB . This does not mean that if you have a 10 TB hard drive you cannot format it in this format, but that you will have to create several volumes (for example two 5 TB or one 8 TB and another 2 TB), since it is the limit. of FAT 32.

For its part, the NTFS format , more widespread today as it is more modern, eliminates these limitations and allows us to use much larger file sizes, without restriction, as well as volumes of the size we want. The bad part, as we have said before, is the compatibility since this format is exclusive for Windows operating systems.

In summary, you should use FAT32 format for pen drives, SSDs or hard drives in which you need greater compatibility because you are going to use them with devices other than a PC, such as a pen drive to use it with music in the car or the mini system, or an SD memory card for a camera or drone.

If, on the other hand, it is a drive that you are going to use exclusively with Windows operating system, then the recommendation is that you use NTFS format, since although you will not gain any performance, you will have no problem to be able to host files of more than 4 GB or create volumes larger than 8 TB.

How do you know what format your pen drive or disk is?

There are times when when you buy a device it already comes with a factory format, or it may also be that you do not remember what format a device you already had has. To find out what format it is, you must open a file browser window (WIN + E), right-click on the unit you want to consult and select Properties.

In the window that opens, similar to the one you can see in the screenshot above, you can see its format under “File system”. In the case of the example, we can see an SSD with NTFS format for Windows, but there it will also inform us if the device has a FAT32 format or any other of those available.

 

by Abdullah Sam
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