Limit on size of FAT32 partitions in CE.NET 4.2?

...

And that limited sector size is...

People, people, people. This argument drags on and on and on, lol.

See here: http://www.hpcfactor.com/support/cesd/h/0044.asp

I will be affording cerebral pain to the next person who asks this question Have a nice day


LOL

& it's the cluster size of 32KB that is the limiter

This is certainly not true. Windows 95 OSR 2 and later are able to create >32GB partitions in FAT32. The 32GB might just in the NT sequence (NT, 2000, XP). Until Windows ME there was a 127.5GB partition limit for FAT32, but certainly no 32GB limit.

The 137 GB limit isn't a FAT limit, it's a BIOS limit in the LBA table. Windows 9x can format a FAT32 volume up to 2TB (another artificial limitation).

I wouldn't trust FAT32 with 2048GB of data, regardless of its true capacity.

So the basic answer is that WinCE.NET 4.2 can handle the biggest disk you can throw at it, as long as it isn't NTFS.

WinCE 4 can use it, untill the crunch time when it attempts to repair or reformat it. Given FAT32's instability and the instant on nature of CE that time will come sooner rather than never.

CE4.2 only supports FAT12/16/32, nothing else in terms of magnetic media as discussed in the CESD.

When you say "FAT32's instability," is that relative to NTFS, or to earlier FAT versions (FAT12/16)? Though I've had few problems with memory cards in either format, the ones I've had with FAT16 have been more serious than those with FAT32.

Personal experience disctates that FAT32 and VFAT are a constant source of system failures, you only have to look at the number of .chk files that a FAT32 volumes deposits in the system root to see it. By default FAT32 doesn't operate with backup FAT either, which makes it even worse.

FAT16 on the other hand is fast and stable and on the NTFS score I've yet to suffer an unrecoverable File System failure on it. I have however had a personal and seen many more unrecoverables using FAT32 (note that I Say file system failure, not disk)

Just to be clear, I was referring to file system errors in my above post.

Doesn't SoftWinter StorageTools allow formatting with a backup FAT? If only it would run properly on my Netbook; it's inexplicably made for Palm-factor HPCs.

EDIT: Nevermind, I answered my own question. When installed from ActiveSync, StorageTools plays nice. And it does support backup FAT tables. I think I need to buy this app; too bad I can't use it to format my other FAT32 disks.

Edited by deusexaethera 2007-09-22 12:17 AM

hmm, for me fat32 seemed more stable than fat16.

btw, i wouldnt try to format a card on the hpc if not absolutely necessary.. these programs, i just dont trust them (maybe the one in CE 2.11 and earlier is ok, but the separately installable programs.. grr)

CNetX Flash Format supports the creation of it as well. http://www.hpcfactor.com/qlink/?linkID=79
Naturally, it uses double the storage space to do it, and writes take longer as the index has to be set twice.

Yeah, but writing 8 bytes of FAT data per cluster instead of 4 bytes, isn't going to matter compared to files that are megabytes in size.

I just reformatted my internal flash memory in FAT32/512B/4KB with backup FATs. It used to be FAT16/512B/32KB with no backup FATs. I feel safer now.

Increasing the write load on the internal, non-replaceable flash memory isn't quite a strategy I would use. The smaller cluster size is better, but would be faster and more efficient as FAT16/4KB - I'm assuming that your PSA is no bigger than 128MB?