
Ask HN: Why USB drives are still using the FAT32 format? - touristtam
With all the Terabyte of drives available for desktop machines and the affordable SSDs pushing toward the same limit, why is that every single USB stick (drive) out there is sold with the same FAT32 format? This is a hindrance as the max filesize on this format is 4Gig. So how come MSFT&#x2F;APPL and Co have not agreed on a new file format to get past this out dated standard?
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rakoo
Take a look at this table:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_file_systems#Sup...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_file_systems#Supporting_operating_systems)

and compare the number of green cells for each filesystem, specifically how
"green" (ie compatible) it is.

~~~
MrBuddyCasino
That leaves only UDF - would that be a viable option for flash media, in RW
mode?

~~~
phireal
I've used UDF on external drives. Its only limitation was that Windows XP
wouldn't write to UDF filesystems (from memory, Windows Vista onwards support
writing to UDF).

It has been a nice little filesystem to use on thumbdrives where cross-
platform compatibility is key.

The only downside is the sparse documentation on creating UDF filesystems on
block devices.

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calciphus
USB sticks go in a lot of things that aren't the laptops the ultra-wealthy
constantly upgrade every 18 months.

I've got equipment with USB ports on it that can only read FAT32.

Transitions take time. Unfortunately both MSFT and APPL practice the fine art
of "Don't improve your own product, hamper your competitors' efforts" as a way
to maintain their respective kingdoms.

~~~
fromfarfaraway
In my country, a popular example of such equipment that can only read FAT32
are devices built to access subscription satellite TV illegaly.

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dkopi
If you were a USB drive manufacturer, which support requests would you rather
deal with? "Why can't I copy a 5gb file to my usb drive?" or "Why isn't my USB
drive recognized on my computer running an old OS?"

Even if MSFT and AAPL and GOOG were to agree on a filesystem for future OS
releases, it would take a very very long time until card manufacturers are
willing to create drives that aren't FAT32.

~~~
bbcbasic
Eventually the first question will be asked more often.

Today's 5gb is tomorrow's word document.

------
mahouse
What's the matter with exFAT?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ExFAT#Adoption](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ExFAT#Adoption)

~~~
djmdjm
This is what is the matter with exFAT:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ExFAT#Restrictive_licensing_an...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ExFAT#Restrictive_licensing_and_software_patents)

That's part of the answer to the OP's question. I thought that ext2 might have
caught on, but I guess vendors were scared off by the GPL and (later, when BSD
licensed implementations became available) the lack of support on Windows.

~~~
mkj
Interesting, the patent
[http://www.google.com/patents/US8583708](http://www.google.com/patents/US8583708)
sounds like SSL certificate "Critical Extensions" but applied to filesystems.

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xobs
As a number of people have mentioned, compatibility is one reason. However,
there's another reason, particularly for flash drives: the FAT itself.

Flash drives tend to be MLC or TLC NAND flash, which is slow and can sometimes
be error-prone. Oftentimes manufacturers will perform a trick and have the
start of the disk actually be faster SLC NAND. Then, as a further enhancement,
they'll make sure the table falls on sector boundaries.

With a more complicated filesystem this becomes more of a challenge. But with
FAT, it's easy.

------
de_dave
LWN suggests storage manufacturers have been optimising for FAT32, so even if
other file systems were more widely supported, they typically won't be as
fast: [https://lwn.net/Articles/428584/](https://lwn.net/Articles/428584/)

------
butwhy
Compatibility.

~~~
fla
Nothing rages me more than beeing unable to copy a 5GB file (4GB limit on
FAT32) on an USB stick just because a PC and a Mac are actively _not_ willing
to cooperate.

Recently discovered my TV was able to read ext4, never looked back :)

~~~
butwhy
Why are you even using physical media in the first place?

The only reason I ever use flash drives nowadays is to format an operating
system.

~~~
collyw
Spoken like an Apple user.

"Who uses cable Ethernet these days" \- I had to twice in the past year - a
hotel in Germany that provided internet via a cable. And when the router
decided to loose the WIFI password and I had to use an old laptop to
physically connect.

I don't use USB sticks very often myself, but I am sure there are tons of
scenarios where people find it useful. Just because it doesn't match any of
your use cases is no justification.

~~~
butwhy
Actually, it is a justification. That's why a bulti-million dollar company is
releasing a macbook with no usb 2 port. Just because a certain demographic
would make use of such a port, a large demographic wouldn't. Plus, they are
looking into the future. For every year that passes, people will use less and
less physical media.

As for your ethernet example, that's too bad. Wifi capabilities will get
better for every year that passes, too.

~~~
josteink
> As for your ethernet example, that's too bad. Wifi capabilities will get
> better for every year that passes, too.

I beg to differ. I've gone from 802.11g to n to ac and I've yet to see any
noticeable gains bringing me even _close_ to plain old Gigabit ethernet.

It cannot compete nor compare when it comes down to even individual aspects:
reliability, individual throughput, total throughput (due to shared medium
access), nor setup speeds.

I'm not just talking "a little bit slower". I'm talking 1 minute guaranteed to
succeed (ethernet), vs 1 hour guaranteed to fail (wifi). In real world
performance, it's orders of magnitudes slower. That's measurable. That's a
fact.

For lots of use-cases wifi is _utterly useless_. Have fun trying to backup
media to a iSCSI volume over wifi for instance.

I'm guessing you don't live in a heavily populated area where the wifi-bands
are over-consumed and have little more effective BW than 25mbps to offer. The
same crap I was promised would improve half a decade ago. It haven't.

A huge part of the tech-hungry power-users lives in these places and suffers
through this subpar performance. We're not happy with mediocre wifi to cover
our needs.

------
mixmastamyk
I recently was having trouble with backing up photos from a terabyte usb drive
between ubuntu and mac os (which couldn't write to it). I was using NTFS which
was the best choice (for the last decade).

Looks like exFat support has improved the last few years, so I bit the bullet,
moved the data off and reformatted. Now working great on both OSs. I wish it
were open sure, and I hear UDF is a possibility too, but stopped when it
started working.

~~~
keeperofdakeys
While major operating systems support UDF, they can all be a little picky
about how it's used on a usb or harddrive. And windows has a tendency of not
mounting something you didn't unmount properly (plugging it into a linux
machine fixes this, from my experience).

The main problem you have is that there is no udf partition id, so I've never
had it mount on OSX systems I've had access to (I have none myself, and it
seems to respect the partition id, unlike windows and linux).

This post seems like a good summary,
[http://tanguy.ortolo.eu/blog/article93/usb-
udf](http://tanguy.ortolo.eu/blog/article93/usb-udf). Though be warned that
(from a quick read) some of the comments contain some misinformation.

------
tomglindmeier
FAT32 is support on almost any platform out of the box without additional
drivers/software etc. There is no other file format with that wide range of
support, yet.

------
ehmmm
I can set the file format in Windows 7 to NTFS or exFAT. Works with any USB
key bought in the last few years.

Windows XP had no problems reading NTFS.

~~~
alcidesfonseca
Mac OS and Linux cannot write to NTFS without 3rd party software.

~~~
dghf
I'm not sure what you mean by "3rd party software" with respect to Linux.

If you mean "not made by the Linux kernel or GNU projects", that applies to
much (most?) of the software available for Linux.

If you mean "proprietary", then NTFS-3G is GPL:
[http://www.tuxera.com/community/open-source-
ntfs-3g/](http://www.tuxera.com/community/open-source-ntfs-3g/)

~~~
lmz
Yes, but drivers for common filesystems usually reside in the kernel,
including the read-only NTFS implementation.

~~~
dghf
Fair enough. But in this case, the userland drivers are easy to install (if
they're not a default part of your distro of choice) and work without a hitch,
at least in my experience.

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devnonymous
IMHO, USB drives as a storage medium will die out before FAT32 on USB drives
die out purely due to the effort Vs value trade-offs.

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chrisxcross
Use UDF as FS. Working for every recent OS

~~~
iwwr
Readable for every recent OS, but apparently not writable by Mac OSX.

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collyw
My guess would be for backward compatibility. Just reformat it if you need
something different.

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informatimago
They're not still using the FAT32 format! Just initialize an ext3 file system
on them!

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seesomesense
Odd. My USB drives use ext4.

