test flash drive

[Basil Chupin]

On 26/11/2010 18:29, O. Sinclair wrote:
> 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
>    
I think if you looked at the 'technicals' of FAT32 you will see why NTFS 
is preferable.

BC

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