A new filesystem
Fat32 is old. Why hasn’t it been replaced yet? I have files bigger than 4GB. I want filesystems bigger than 32GB. This Slashdot article gives some decent background, but doesn’t really come up with a winner. If we look at HFS, ext2, or NTFS, there are options for Mac, Linux, and Windows machines. Of course these options don’t include the journaling abilities of HFS+ or ext3. Does that mean NTFS is the only option? It used to be a bad idea to have a journaling filesystem on a USB key, which is one of the key devices that would need to support this. I don’t know if current wear leveling is good enough to deal with journaling, or if this issue is only an urban myth. Maybe the Mythbusters will take this one up. We all know that Linux will eventually get support for anything that is popular enough, regardless of legality. I don’t know if Microsoft has patents up its sleeve that it could use to attempt to shut down NTFS support on Linux, but it wouldn’t surprise me. That being said, I would think that Microsoft would prefer their filesystem to the other options I mentioned, and several I didn’t. As long as we are allowed to format devices we buy, any of these are an option yet. My current vote is for better NTFS support across platforms, but only time will tell. What do think would make the best FAT32 replacement?