Should I format USB sticks and SD cards to FAT, FAT32, exFAT or NTFS? (Windows files, live Linux distributions)

Question

Does it depend on the media size which one to chose or on some other parameters? On Windows 7, FAT16 is the default. In pendrivelinux.com's Universal USB Installer, FAT32. Which one should I chose? How about NTFS for Windows use?

How about exFAT? It is the Microsoft designed filesystem for removable media. Is there a difference in USB sticks and SD cards in this regard?

Seeing developments in the other question, should I still use something like exFAT if I don't want Recycle bins created on every single machine I plug my USB thumb drive into?

Solution 1

To put it simply:

• Between FAT and FAT32, just choose FAT32.
• Between NTFS and FAT32, if you use the drive only in Windows, use NTFS. In any other case, use FAT32.

Why NTFS for Windows?

• NTFS (New Technology File System) was introduced by Windows and has been supported since the early versions of Windows. So it has become sort of a Windows thing.

• Is the native file system for Windows NT, Windows 2000, and Windows XP.

• Allows indexing which improves file searching (mostly, faster); causes slight performance hit (can turn off).
• Has better security -- such as file-wise encryption (not supported by Windows XP Home edition) and per-user access rules (you can stop your wife from seeing the porn folder!)
• Supports user quotas (prevent the tykes from downloading too many MP3 files)
• Has file-wise compression.
• Is journaled, decreasing data loss (ScanDisk at start up unnecessary).
• Uses Unicode (allows foreign and extended character) file names and natively supports long file names.
• Supports larger files than FAT (greater than 4 GB).
• Allows larger volume sizes (greater than 1 TB). There is talk about a theoretical limit of 16 exabytes, and up to 2 terabytes.
• Supported format on dynamic disks (no dynamic disks on Windows XP Home).
• Works well with large cache (greater than 96 MB systems).
• Performs better on volumes ~20 GB and more.
• Is more space-efficient on large volumes (greater than 8 GB).
• Resistant to fragmentation.

Why FAT32 for Linux?

• FAT32 works well almost everywhere. [FAT32 isn't even the default filesystem on Linux (as opposed to NTFS and Windows)]

Solution 2

Windows formats USB drives as NTFS by default, FAT is really old, and what type of file system you want to go with depends on your need.

NTFS

• Supports files larger than 4 GB
• Can run Windows 8 live
• UNetbootin does not support NTFS and refuses to use drives that are NTFS formatted.

FAT32

• Files must be smaller than 4 GB
• Linux Live works

Please know that you can have several partition in your USB device and thereby you can have an NTFS and a FAT32 partition.

Solution 3

I recommend using UDF, which has roughly the same advantages as NTFS mentioned in @Hele's answer. The biggest reason to use UDF instead of NTFS is OS X compatibility. OS X can only read but not write to NTFS partitions. UDF is well-supported, read-write, on Windows¹, OS X, and Linux.

To format a drive as UDF, see:

• Using UDF on a USB flash drive
• How to format a flash drive as UDF in Windows 7?

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¹ Except Windows XP, which has read-only UDF support

Comments

[Karan]

SDXC cards are formatted using exFAT by default, although of course you can reformat them as required.

[superuser]

Windows formats USB drives as NTFS by default Windows 7 formats a USB as FAT16 by default. Perhaps I have a too old stick? Does it depend on that?

[Hele]

How big is it ?

[Hele]

More than one stick?

[superuser]

I have sticks ranging from 256 Mb up to 8 Gb. (Edited.)

[Hele]

No, the size of the pendrive doesn't matter. But in the case of pendrives larger than 4GB, you wont be able to store large files[like movies] of size >4GB in FAT or FAT32. exFAT may also be a viable option as it has the combined features of both. But exFAT is not widely supported.

[superuser]

So far so good. But perhaps do you have a better explanation (other than just because) for why I should use the specific file format (NTFS for Windows, FAT32 for Linux) compared to Windows 7's default offering to format the stick to FAT16? Or perhaps I should ask the other way around: why Windows 7 still offers to format the stick to FAT16? I appreciate you.

[Hele]

The default formats to convert the device to vary from drive to drive. For example in my Sandisk 16GB, it offers NTFS, FAT and FAT32 only. Regarding the rest of your questions, I'll update my answer.

[vonbrand]

Care to share some numbers? The link might dissapear...

[sq33G]

+1 for the pointer on Unetbootin, just saved me from a lot of aggravation down the road

[Synetech]

That’s a nice list, but it seems to be NTFS-biased. It doesn’t even mention exFAT (which was developed especially for removable media). Also, several points have no bearing on flash-media (e.g., I for one have never seen a 1TB memory card or a usb-drive with any cache). As well, it doesn’t give information about the impact that NTFS has on flash-media; for example does the journaling feature cause it to write to the disk more often (which of course is bad for flash-media) than FAT does?

[phuclv]

@superuser: Windows will default to the current format of the drive, not FAT16. That means when you choose to format a FAT32 drive it will be FAT32 by default, formatting an NTFS drive will make format dialog display NTFS as default. FAT16 drives cannot be larger than 4GB, and some old OSes will have trouble reading 4GB FAT16 drives.

[phuclv]

Using FAT16 for partitions larger than 1GB is extremely inefficient because in that case 16KB cluster or above must be used, and not all supports 64KB cluster in 4GB FAT16 drive. Also note that Gb and GB are different, GB (or more exactly, GiB, because GB and GiB are also different). 8Gb as you mentioned above is in fact only 1GB

[Lyman Enders Knowles]

I'm not sure you can generalize SSD benchmark results to much cheaper and simpler thumb drives.

[Foo Bar]

NTFS by default? Surely not! Even Windows 8.1 selects FAT (16!) as default for sticks smaller 2 GB and FAT32 for sticks larger 2GB.

[Anixx]

Also UDF is optimized for media with limited rewriting cycles, like CD/DVD-RW and flash drives.