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format it yourself? this is silly.
this post was submitted on 03 Mar 2025
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I managed to format my USB so that it's recognised by all three major OS. Can't remember the FS name ..
Uh, fat32? 😅
ExFAT?
That what I use for the sd card for my steam deck to put very legally downloaded movies on it. The deck is basically my smart TV.
Most tvs in the last 20 years have usb or sd ports. Even "dumb" ones. I got a 2tb hard drive and I could hook it up directly to my tv.
Nope, not that one. "Universal Flash Storage", now that I remember
I wish Windows would support f2fs. I'm tired of formatting drives as fat32 to give files to my sister. Windows somehow manages to corrupt it from unzipping a folder.
They did manage to move beyond BMP images, so anything is possible.
I still have to use MBR instead of GPT because there are people still running Windows versions that can't read it.
Wait, people use thumb drives with whatever formatting was on it when they ripped open the box? Next you’re gonna tell me people pick up random usb sticks off the ground and plug it in to their computer….
Most people don't know what a file system is
If you're cold they're cold. Plug them in and warm them up.
The chance of being hacked with a randomly found USB drive is near zero
It increases if you find them near secure locations.
That's fair I guess. But for the average person, not so much
That is the best way to hack a company
Bonus points if you make the .pdf have to be moved off the thumb drive to open
Windows won't even let you format them in fat32 anymore! Which sucks when the device you plan to use it for TECHNICALLY supports exfat, but there's lots of community posts about how the drivers for exfat regularly corrupt the drive if it tries to read/write too much...
What? That just means it will corrupt files on fat32 too but not the whole filesystem so you didn't notice. Return that shit.
Yeah, I use a lot of legacy gear for work. They type of shit that is running Windows 98 embedded. Fat32 will never die as long as legacy support is a thing. If I plug an exFAT drive into one of those machines, it won’t even recognize the drive.
I yearn for stuff as new as win98 embedded...I still have to work with PLCs that use UV-erasable eeprom to store the progam.
Oh man flashbacks to those, I remember they were considered antiquated when I was first getting into PCs 20+ years ago 🫠
There exists a modern EPROM replacement that internally uses flash and the chip itself has a USB port on it, but I can't remember the name.
I regularly format usb drives to fat32 with windows. You just need to use diskpart.
Doesn’t that limit you to 32GB partition sizes for fat32?
Yes, it does. It's usually for OS updates/installation sticks or configuration files for stuff like switches, meeting bars, conference phones, etc... and not for data transfer.
It may have a lot to do with licensing royalties. Exfat was created by Microsoft and is licensed for use. So why increase the cost of the device when you can just ship it with the older system that costs nothing.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/legal/intellectualproperty/tech-licensing/programs#exfat
There are so many open filesystems that I'm not sure that it's really a valid issue. It's more that MS values compatibility with prehistoric stuff more than anything. If it was up to them, we'd still be using wax tablets and styluses for compatibility's sake.
Literally everything with USB can read FAT32, there's some old or incredibly simple stuff out there that doesn't read exFAT.
Manufacturers ideally want to spend as little as possible handling support for users, so they go with the option that isn't going to result in returns from people who think it doesn't work with their old printer or whatever.
Updated some recent Gigabyte mini-pc using EFI shell the other month. I had to have a USB flash drive with FAT32
Same with my JBL party box speakers, probably most audio gear with USB interfaces.
I have a client that does HVAC work who needed help preparing a 128GB flash drive for loading firmware onto high end thermostats. Quickly ran the command to format as FAT32 because that's what the thermostats require (and he indicated the firmware files would exceed the 32GB limit in the GUI)
Are you formatting it using the windows disk manager? Any 3rd party tool will allow you to go above the 32GB limit.
The client was, so I ran the command for them to format the full 128GB as FAT32
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You can format a flash drive with whatever the hell file system you want. Just, don't expect anything formatted exFAT to work in any dedicated device made before 2019, nor even the majority of them made afterwards.
The ones who need to get their shit together are the manufacturers of printers, media players, car head units, set top boxes, game consoles, and all the other things into which you might want to insert a flash drive (or memory card) that is not a full-blown PC.
What's wrong with exfat? I've used it dozens of time with no problems.
Edit: oh thought you meant wth pcs. You mean cars and receivers and stuff. Fair.
It's not like formatting it to another filesystem is remotely difficult. Hell you could even make multiple partitions and a software raid, LVM, whatever.
If you need a different filesystem, then do that.
com'on
Recently tried to make a printer scan a file to an exFAT formatted thumb drive, didn't go well. Then tried moving a file from a windows to a linux machine using another exFAT formatted thumb drive, still no luck lol.
I get the impression that ext4 is more widely supported than exFAT.
Lol nah, exFAT is the only current FS (other than fat32) capable of being read AND written to by Linux, MacOS and Windows out of the box
It's supported by Linux, Windows, MacOS, and all of the embedded devices with a firmware written by organizations that give a damn.
But somehow, ext4 passes under the radar and gets into nearly every embedded device.
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