NTFS Support Needed for Touch

[adydula]

I hope logitech is listening, the main reason to buy the new touch is the ability to use an external USB drive and with many of us that want to load more than 32gb of music not supporting NTFS is really a lousy decision.

I sincerlehy hope NTFS is supported on day 1, so we can use larger drives to add to the convience of using the Touch with larger music collections.

I have a Touch on preorder and the main reason is to be able to use a USB drive and not have to have a PC on and running....

I also understand that if you wanted to use a external USB drive along with a wirless or enet connection at the same time will also be possible.

Couple this with an improved 24/96 Dac this is making the touch very desireable for many of us that dont want NAS, Raid or networking complications.

Again. please. please support NTFS!!

Thanks
Alex

[dean]

Please add your vote (and cc for status) on the bug:

https://bugs.slimdevices.com/show_bug.cgi?id=12675


On Oct 21, 2009, at 7:29 PM, adydula wrote:

>
> I hope logitech is listening, the main reason to buy the new touch is
> the ability to use an external USB drive and with many of us that want
> to load more than 32gb of music not supporting NTFS is really a lousy
> decision.
>
> I sincerlehy hope NTFS is supported on day 1, so we can use larger
> drives to add to the convience of using the Touch with larger music
> collections.
>
> I have a Touch on preorder and the main reason is to be able to use a
> USB drive and not have to have a PC on and running....
>
> I also understand that if you wanted to use a external USB drive along
> with a wirless or enet connection at the same time will also be
> possible.
>
> Couple this with an improved 24/96 Dac this is making the touch very
> desireable for many of us that dont want NAS, Raid or networking
> complications.
>
> Again. please. please support NTFS!!
>
> Thanks
> Alex
>
>
> --
> adydula
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> adydula's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=33723
> View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=70142
>
>

[thomasfoerster]

@adyula:
Why do you think you need NTFS?
The only restriction of fat32 is that no single file may be larger than 2GB.
But hey, do you really have seen an audio file larger than 2GB?

I am using USB drives with 500GB and 1TB with fat32 and can see no disadvantage at all.

Why anyone could insist he needs other file systems than fat32, I don't understand.

Thomas

[Phil Leigh]

I reformatted one of my 1Tb music drives to fat32 and it works fine.

[JJZolx]

The reason that NTFS support is needed is that external USB drives are now being sold with NTFS formatting out of the box. That's the only reason. And if it's not supported when the Touch is released, Logitech will only be screwing themselves and nobody else.

[tamanaco]

Here is what MS says about FAT and NTFS

http://support.microsoft.com/default...;en-us;Q100108

I'd say that if you want "portability" (you use your drive with several platforms) FAT32 is the way to go. If your environment is homogeneous (All Windows systems) I'd use NTFS.

In regards to performance if you're using an external USB drive you won't gain much on performance with NTFS as the USB connection becomes the bottleneck. Don't quote me, but I believe that the performance advantage of NTFS is due to its smaller clusters size. Btw, I have seen FAT32 partitions formatted using 3rd party applications that are larger that the "officially" Windows supported size. FAT32 4GB limitation on file size comes into play if you use the drive for backup because backup applications can create files that are larger than that. NTFS also provides better security, but if you're using the drive just to store music files I don't see the need for security and its overhead.

[adydula]

Hello,

This is from Microsoft:

Note the following limitations when you use the FAT32 file system with Windows XP:

Clusters cannot be 64 kilobytes (KB) or larger. If clusters are 64 KB or larger, some programs (such as Setup programs) may incorrectly calculate disk space.

A FAT32 volume must contain a minimum of 65,527 clusters. You cannot increase the cluster size on a volume that uses the FAT32 file system so that it contains fewer than 65,527 clusters.

The maximum disk size is approximately 8 terabytes when you take into account the following variables: The maximum possible number of clusters on a FAT32 volume is 268,435,445, and there is a maximum of 32 KB per cluster, along with the space required for the file allocation table (FAT).

You cannot decrease the cluster size on a FAT32 volume so that the size of the FAT is larger than 16 megabytes (MB) minus 64 KB.

You cannot format a volume larger than 32 gigabytes (GB) in size using the FAT32 file system during the Windows XP installation process.

Windows XP can mount and support FAT32 volumes larger than 32 GB (subject to the other limits), but you cannot create a FAT32 volume larger than 32 GB by using the Format tool during Setup.

If you need to format a volume that is larger than 32 GB, use the NTFS file system to format it. Another option is to start from a Microsoft Windows 98 or Microsoft Windows Millennium Edition (Me) Startup disk and use the Format tool included on the disk.


This said the file size limitation of 4gb is not an issue for us.

The main concerns are:

1. You can not format a FAT32 partition or volume greater than 32gb using WIN XP. You can mount drives partitioned larger than 32gb but its with XP.
Does the linux OS support partitions larger than 32gb? If the OS on the Touch will allow drives partitioned greater than 32gb this is good.

2. Many newer usb drives come preformatted with NTFS to support Microsofts NTFS etc..its there recommendation to use NTFS over FAT32 on large drives.
If a person gets a new usb drive partitioned with ntfs they may not know how or have a way to re-format this drive to FAT32. This will cause calls to logitech as these new large $99 1 TB USB drives come out , and they are out.

From some of the comments from thomas forester it seems that he is using drives formated larger than 32 gb , which is good. The newer ntfs drives would need to be re-formated etc.

Some folks hav 90,000 songs in their collections and NTFS will be an adavantage if the drivers are written to properly support the NTFS file structure...with larger and larger drives.

FAT32 as some have said in real world performance may not be that noticeable but its indeed better , forward looking and I would think that Logitech would want to be forward looking and best of breed...legacy standards are hard to leave sometime, but the time has come.!

Alex

[Phil Leigh]

Hello,

This is from Microsoft:

Note the following limitations when you use the FAT32 file system with Windows XP:

Clusters cannot be 64 kilobytes (KB) or larger. If clusters are 64 KB or larger, some programs (such as Setup programs) may incorrectly calculate disk space.

A FAT32 volume must contain a minimum of 65,527 clusters. You cannot increase the cluster size on a volume that uses the FAT32 file system so that it contains fewer than 65,527 clusters.

The maximum disk size is approximately 8 terabytes when you take into account the following variables: The maximum possible number of clusters on a FAT32 volume is 268,435,445, and there is a maximum of 32 KB per cluster, along with the space required for the file allocation table (FAT).

You cannot decrease the cluster size on a FAT32 volume so that the size of the FAT is larger than 16 megabytes (MB) minus 64 KB.

You cannot format a volume larger than 32 gigabytes (GB) in size using the FAT32 file system during the Windows XP installation process.

Windows XP can mount and support FAT32 volumes larger than 32 GB (subject to the other limits), but you cannot create a FAT32 volume larger than 32 GB by using the Format tool during Setup.

If you need to format a volume that is larger than 32 GB, use the NTFS file system to format it. Another option is to start from a Microsoft Windows 98 or Microsoft Windows Millennium Edition (Me) Startup disk and use the Format tool included on the disk.


This said the file size limitation of 4gb is not an issue for us.

The main concerns are:

1. You can not format a FAT32 partition or volume greater than 32gb using WIN XP. You can mount drives partitioned larger than 32gb but its with XP.
Does the linux OS support partitions larger than 32gb? If the OS on the Touch will allow drives partitioned greater than 32gb this is good.

2. Many newer usb drives come preformatted with NTFS to support Microsofts NTFS etc..its there recommendation to use NTFS over FAT32 on large drives.
If a person gets a new usb drive partitioned with ntfs they may not know how or have a way to re-format this drive to FAT32. This will cause calls to logitech as these new large $99 1 TB USB drives come out , and they are out.

From some of the comments from thomas forester it seems that he is using drives formated larger than 32 gb , which is good. The newer ntfs drives would need to be re-formated etc.

Some folks hav 90,000 songs in their collections and NTFS will be an adavantage if the drivers are written to properly support the NTFS file structure...with larger and larger drives.

FAT32 as some have said in real world performance may not be that noticeable but its indeed better , forward looking and I would think that Logitech would want to be forward looking and best of breed...legacy standards are hard to leave sometime, but the time has come.!

Alex

Alex, which part of this do you have a problem with?

1) I have successfully reformatted a 1Tb NTFS drive to FAT32 (several times actually) under XP using fat32format.exe.

2) Performance differances (NTFS vs FAT32) are irrelevant for an external USB drive since the USB interface is always the bottleneck.


Phil

[MeSue]

I want NTFS support because Windows Home Server will only back up to a NTFS formatted drive, so my music backup has to be on a NTFS drive and this is the drive I would want to use with the Touch when I don't have access to my server.

[Phil Leigh]

Don't get me wrong - of course it should eventually support NTFS!