Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
USB Stick Format Question, Please ?
- Thread starter Robert4
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Disk Utility is Apple's program for formatting disk, and it is located in your Utilities folder. As I recall a FAT 32 has a file size limit and is an outdate format. It is best to use EXFAT. Note also that the Mac can read NTFS but cannot write to that format without a 3rd party app.
FAT32 is an OK format for small USB sticks (<=32Gb) if, and only if, you will NEVER want to store a file 4Gb or larger.
I always thought FAT32 was limited to 4gb, but (apparently) there's a way to get more into it - some discussion of it here but I haven't looked at the details.
Anyway, I've been working on a gps/mapping app for Android that stores 1tb of map data on a SD card in an inexpensive rugged Android tablet. As far as I can tell, that device requires SD cards to be formatted as FAT32, however it really can access the full 1tb of data so they must be using some sort of trick. Same thing on a cheap rugged Android phone.
The interesting thing is that it's much less efficient in storing data than APFS is on my Mac. I also have an APFS-formatted 1tb SSD with the same data on it, but if I copy 600gb of files to the FAT-32 formatted SD card with my Mac, it takes up ~800gb on the card - in other words, FAT32 uses about 33% more space (approximate numbers).
OTOH, I have an 8-track audio field recorder that requires FAT32-formatted SD cards. IIRC, it will automatically start a new file if you get close to the 4gb limit while recording.
Anyway, I've been working on a gps/mapping app for Android that stores 1tb of map data on a SD card in an inexpensive rugged Android tablet. As far as I can tell, that device requires SD cards to be formatted as FAT32, however it really can access the full 1tb of data so they must be using some sort of trick. Same thing on a cheap rugged Android phone.
The interesting thing is that it's much less efficient in storing data than APFS is on my Mac. I also have an APFS-formatted 1tb SSD with the same data on it, but if I copy 600gb of files to the FAT-32 formatted SD card with my Mac, it takes up ~800gb on the card - in other words, FAT32 uses about 33% more space (approximate numbers).
OTOH, I have an 8-track audio field recorder that requires FAT32-formatted SD cards. IIRC, it will automatically start a new file if you get close to the 4gb limit while recording.
I have a 64GB usb pen drive which I formatted in ExtFAT and my elephant, which is on a diet by the way, is way faster than the damn thing is... I need compatibility with Win computers but I rather give that up and go straight for Mac only file system, it is unusable and DiskUtility doesn't report any issue with the hardware, any hint at why to copy 4GB the estimated time was 13 minutes?