NTFS Support Needed for Touch

**adydula** · 2009-10-22, 11:30

Hey Phil,

The part(s) I have issues with are:

1. People that buy a large USB drive formatted with NTFS will have a rude awakening when their music on these drives are not recognized. Most people will not know how to find and use fat32format.exe. So supporting both FAT 32 and NTFS out of the box will be better for these users and for Logitech support not having to answer calls on this and also to tell a customer to go get a non-microsoft utility to format a drive that already has lots of music on it..ie transfer the music off , format with said utility, copy back etc...

I and you know there are workarounds but I work in PC development and dont have a problem with technology and making things work...but many of the appliance operators will have issues with this and call logitech...

just saying!

All the best
Alex

**nicolas75** · 2009-10-23, 13:01

Just discovered this NTFS issue.
I own a squeezebox classic and I am very interested in the Touch.
But ...
I often have to deal with files larger than 4GB.
(big files coming from professional applications, or simply DVD iso images for movies)
I won't keep a specific obsolete FAT32 drive just for the Touch.
Not supporting NTFS is a showstopper for me.

(No I won't use linux formats, I have to deal too often with XP x86 and Seven x64)
Please, we are in 2009, FAT32 and 4GB limitation is totally obsolete ...

**adydula** · 2009-10-23, 18:36

You can use fat32format.exe, u can find it on the web and format a larger drive than 32gb. This is unsupported by Microsoft.

Logitech really needs to understand they need to support the mose dominant file system out there.

This will reduce many sales when people find this is not in the plan for launch date.

They need to come out with a statement that NTFS will be supported and when.

Its as simle as that.

Even in Windows you can pull out a USN device and potentially loose data, I have on USB memory keys. It only took once to properly detach it from the Windows utility provided in the task bar...Microsoft did not stop the OS from going gold with this problem.

It could be addressed by documentation, readme files, this forum, and possibly a "touch here' to safely detach your usb drive.

Me personally I will have a usb drive semi-permantely attached, maybe once a month when adding to the drive I will remove it with power OFF and copy the new stuff and reattach and power on.

Again...lets get NTFS in the plan gentlemen...and thanks for listening and being customer driven!!

Alex

**usch** · 2009-10-25, 10:45

Originally Posted by JJZolx

The reason that NTFS support is needed is that external USB drives are now being sold with NTFS formatting out of the box.

Really? Not that I don't believe you, but I haven't seen any NTFS pre-formatted drives yet. Which manufacturer sells these? I have always seen NTFS as something proprietary to Microsoft. Even the 1TB disk I bought recently came with FAT32.

Those drives would not work with Linux or with a Mac either, so I suppose they put a warning "only suitable for Microsoft Windows" on the box?

NTFS support would be nice to have, without question, but it is not entirely trivial. Think of file ownership and access control lists, for example.

**MeSue** · 2009-10-25, 10:58

Originally Posted by usch

Really? Not that I don't believe you, but I haven't seen any NTFS pre-formatted drives yet. Which manufacturer sells these? I have always seen NTFS as something proprietary to Microsoft. Even the 1TB disk I bought recently came with FAT32.

Most of the ones that come with backup solution are like that. I bought a Seagate Freeagent Go drive last July and it was preformatted NTFS.

**nicolas75** · 2009-11-02, 04:24

Originally Posted by MeSue

Most of the ones that come with backup solution are like that. I bought a Seagate Freeagent Go drive last July and it was preformatted NTFS.

Just bought a small Western Digital essential 500GB USB
It is preformatted NTFS
Documentation provide a link if you need to reformat it for Mac.

**ModelCitizen** · 2009-11-06, 02:55

I was about to reformat my 1tb USB backup drive to Fat32 so I could try out TinySC and as I result I've discovered:

1) It is impossible to format large USB drives to Fat32 using Windows XP Pro or Windows 7 gui (which I assume means impossible with Vista too).
2) The Fat32 file system is not capable of holding files larger than 4gb
3) The Fat32 file system is wasteful on disk space
4) Increasingly modern USB drives are being shipped formatted as NTFS
4) TinySC is not slated to support NTFS till 8.0.1 (!!!!)

None of the reasons given in the bug/enhancement for not supporting NTFS at launch add up when compared to the pain this will cause Touch buyers and Logitech support. NTFS support at release is not an enhancement, it's a necessity.

Vote for the bug https://bugs.slimdevices.com/show_bug.cgi?id=12675

MC

**Themis** · 2009-11-06, 04:12

Voted also. I haven't used FAT32 for years: all my disks are NTFS.

**ModelCitizen** · 2009-11-06, 04:34

Given that the reasons supplied in the bug for TinySC not supporting NTFS at release appear so inadequate can anyone think of any other reasons Logitech might not want to add NTFS support immediately?

The lack of NTFS support seems bizarre. Logitech's big push is towards the non-geeky mass market, the *vast* majority of who will use one of the last three Windows OS's. Many (most?) will not want to keep PCs on all the time (and are increasingly likely only to have laptops in the home anyway) and will naturally prefer to use TinySC for local music. If they buy a USB drive for this purpose the chances now seem good that it will be formatted as NTFS (and if they use the Windows gui to format it themselves they will *only* be able to format it as NTFS).

Many of this type of user will never have heard of NTFS or FAT32 (or the command line). All they will see is a product that they have paid for that does not do what they wanted. And Logitech will be perceived to have released an inadequate product before it was ready for market and with not enough thought.

MC

**thomasfoerster** · 2009-11-06, 05:45

One reason might be that TinySC runs on some Linux OS.
As far as I know NTFS-support is still in beta-state on the Linux side...
Please correct me if I am wrong.

If that still is correct, Logitech has to decide if they support this beta feature by default or not.
Toshiba does with their WAP, but who knows what trouble they run into in the future..

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NTFS support is not an enhancement, it's a necessity.

Lack of Tiny SC support for NTFS is madness

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