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    Why Fat32?

    Discussion in 'Acer' started by banderbe, Jun 15, 2006.

  1. banderbe

    banderbe Newbie

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    Anyone know why Acer insists on formatting their harddisks with FAT32??
     
    banderbe, Jun 15, 2006
    #1
  2. coriolis

    coriolis Notebook Nobel Laureate

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    Not just Acer, but the majority of all companies also do this.

    As for why....well, I guess not everyone needs to transfer 4gb+ files ;)
     
    coriolis, Jun 15, 2006
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  3. Unreal

    Unreal Notebook Deity NBR Reviewer

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    What other companies do this? l've had gateways, dells, hps and none of them were formatted with FAT32.
     
    Unreal, Jun 15, 2006
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  4. Vorin

    Vorin Notebook Enthusiast

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    Ive had a gateway and an acer, and they both have a fat32 partition; this is for the factory installed recovery software. I dont know WHY they have to use fat32, but that's fairly normal.
    You can reformat the partition using partition magic, and many people have; most having success with the process.
     
    Vorin, Jun 15, 2006
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  5. Drio

    Drio Notebook Geek

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    Probably because of the weather ...

    Or maybe because they don't want to change a reasonable and save way (developed eons ago) of whacking an image on a HD. Or they don't want to pay for an upgrade. Or it is because Windows XP can easily convert from FAT32 to NTFS but not the other way around.

    Who knows? Who cares?

    Cheers

    Drio
     
    Drio, Jun 15, 2006
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  6. Arla

    Arla Notebook Deity

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    Probably because FAT32 is dos readable so is far easier to deal with, also a lot of companies seem to use Norton Ghost, which is fine for FAT32, but gets more questionable when you get to NTFS.
     
    Arla, Jun 15, 2006
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  7. Vorin

    Vorin Notebook Enthusiast

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    good call.
     
    Vorin, Jun 15, 2006
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  8. c.hilding

    c.hilding Notebook Enthusiast

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    To expand on this, the FAT32 specifications are openly available from Microsoft, making it easy to code a reader/writer for that file system. Reading and writing is necessary for the backup software to be able to do its job.

    When it comes to NTFS, Microsoft is VERY secretive about it, and there exists only reverse-engineered 3rd-party READERS, and NO WRITERS. So that's why they can't use NTFS for their backup software and are forced to format their drives in FAT32.

    I think Partition Magic may have received the NTFS specifications though, because if I'm not mistaken that program can edit NTFS partitions. That's an exception though.


    Best Regards,
    Christopher H.
     
    c.hilding, Jun 28, 2006
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  9. GreyGhost

    GreyGhost Notebook Enthusiast

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    Thx for the explanations. However FAT32 drives seems slower then NTFS. I noticed that when copying and during defragging.
     
    GreyGhost, Jun 28, 2006
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  10. Amol

    Amol APH! NBR Reviewer

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    Moreover, users vary in needs. Other OSs can deal with FAT32 much easier than NTFS. Linux, for example.
     
    Amol, Jun 28, 2006
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  11. k3l0

    k3l0 Notebook Consultant

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    This is patently false. There are backup programs that support NTFS just fine, such as Acronis True Image. (The version of True Image's recovery boot CD that supports USB/FireWire/networking runs on Linux.) Current Linux support has limited write support via the open source driver, and it has safeguards that prevent any sort of data corruption (by refusing to do things that would result in inconsistency). Paragon has a commercially available binary driver for Linux. Other tools besides Partition Magic are able to deal with NTFS partitions. Open source software exists that resizes and formats NTFS partitions without any issues.
     
    k3l0, Jun 28, 2006
    #11