test flash drive

[O. Sinclair]

On 26/11/2010 08:50, Basil Chupin wrote:
> On 26/11/2010 16:55, Doug wrote:
>> I've ordered some flash drives at an attractive price, with a
>> well-known brand name, but they are coming from Hong-Kong,
>> so I don't know what I'll really get.  Can they be tested some
>> way, and if so, how?  (Hopefully they will be here in a few days.)
>> I don't know if flash drives come formatted or not;
>> presumably I could format one with gparted to any common
>> format.  If so, what format?  I would think NTFS would be the
>> most universally useful, assuming they work OK.  Or FAT32?
>> (I don't remember if gparted can format to M/S formats.)
>> I use both Linux and Win7.
>>
>> Thanx for your input--doug
>>
>
> Flash drives - from wherever - come formatted with FAT(32). And I have
> yet to come across a flash drive which did not come from Asia.
>
> You can format the flash drive with whatever file system you want. I
> have formatted them with ext4, ext3, ext2, NTFS. gparted is one of the
> utils which will do the formatting for you (either on a standalone CD or
> as available on the installation CD for K/Ubuntu).
>
> Since Linux can handle both FAT and NTFS then if you are looking for
> "universal" access then use either one - NTFS would be preferred I would
> think (provided the latest Windows' formatting is compatible with the
> NTFS used in previous releases [I mention this because NTFS after XP is
> slightly different to XP, and what it is now I simply do not know])
> because you are not restricted to limited file sizes.
>
there is supposedly a reason for the general use of FAT32 instead of 
NTFS on flash drives so I would check that up before going ntfs

/Sinclair