Explaining File Systems: NTFS, exFAT, FAT32, ext4 & More 

I would say with FAT32 you're eventually guaranteed corrupted files, merged files, indexes that cannot be read etc. Only use it for use with devices that can only read FAT32, and keep it's contents backed up **when** you need to restore it.

Thankyou for the notes....

ext4 has also awesome functions, like space preallocation: when you write a large file on an ext4, the continous space is preallocated, so the file is writeen on a hard drive continously. This is very important if you're using old magnetic HDDs not SSDs, where drive head normally would have to jump all over the plates to access one file. With ext4 you maximise HDDs performance, specially for very large files eg. while editing videos, or playing huge games.

@@gottagowork Id still say its perfectly valid for flash drives and such that generally store data with only rarely if ever having any read/write activity, especially the latter, since youre pretty unlikely to corrupt stuff thats not in use.

Bit off topic here I guess, but what do you do if an NTFS system drive fails? The drive in question is long gone and died a long, painful death with many nuisances like long delays when trying to read files (like solid 10 second freezes), corrupted files all over the place, frequent CHKDSK runs on startup, consistent clicking noises etc. Is there any file system that has a better chance at handling failures like that?

:)

I love his videos. They’re so informative and i feel like he has so much experience to speak from; it makes it seem like he was sent from the future to teach about electronics. Music makes it even better

I miss the old discovery channel. Now it is all about real life tv. People selling trash and pretend it is real and not acting.

@Milton Keenes native exfat support is still pretty young in ubuntu, it came in 20.04

Yeah your right ❤️

Cool.

I remember such a limit on _RAM,_ but had forgotten the file size limit. I was only the second person I knew to buy a PC, which I wanted for simple word processing and databases. So for a few years it _was_ enough (pre-Windows and pre-Worldwide Web). 😏 But I knew it _wasn't_ enough for the audio/video uses I dreamed of. It's just that in the late 80s, the beefiest hardware I could _afford_ was a $5,000 machine -- from a company that had just changed its name from PCs Limited to _Dell._ DOS tricks allowed me to take advantage of the "extended" and "expanded" memory (remember those workarounds?). After all, I had a whopping _Megabyte_ of the stuff. 😃 The machine also had a "386" processor and a monstrous 90 _Megabyte_ hard drive, too. 😮 Now I have countless individual _files_ larger than that. 😄Truly amazing how far the technology has advanced.

@@MikeAnn193 Haha, yeah, I remember those times. First computer I ever bought was a pretty decent Sinclair ZX Spectrum +2. Programming in Basic and stuff. Hell, I had a whole 128 KB of Ram available. I could look those Commodore 64 users straight in the eye. Good times

​@@johnphilippatos 😀128 KB, wow. Few people I've told my story to have been able to outdo me, but you managed! The brand name Sinclair sounds familiar, but I remember nothing about them. A friend of mine -- the _first_ computer owner I alluded to -- had one that used _cassette tapes_ as the storage medium. That's about the only detail I recall, but he probably also had to program in BASIC. I seem to recall he even had to load the operating system from the cassette each time, which probably took at least a few minutes. Do you still have your Sinclair? I wouldn't have the heart to get rid of my Dell, even if it didn't hold some treasured files.

@@MikeAnn193 Well, almost everything you mention are quite accurate about Sinclair. Sir Clive Sinclair was a pioneer in the field, who was the first to introduce a low budget home computer in the UK market, the ZX80, at the dawn of the 80's. He achieved further acclaim by introducing the Sinclair ZX Spectrum series computers and his final act was ZX Spectrum+ 128K. He sold his company to Alan Michael Sugar TRADemarks, known as AMSTRAD and their first model on the series was the updated ZX Spectrum+ 128K, called Sinclair ZX Spectrum +2. It featured a quite normal keyboard compared to the original Sinclair's crappy one and it had an analog tape (cassette) recorder embedded in the case. Everything was stored there, any program took forever to upload in the memory, and you would see the "Tape Loading Error" message in the end, more frequently that you could ever imagine. The operating system was not stored there, it was stored in the ROM and the environment was Spectrum Basic, not DOS, CP/M, or any other operating system. We gave the instructions in Basic, we programmed in Basic, everything we did was in Basic. It was quite hard, but it gave you a better understanding about how a computer works, as the same principles are more or less still valid today. It gave you an inner look if you know what I mean. Unfortunately in Greece, other than the Commodore's and ATARI's whereabouts, we had little info at the time about what was happening on the other side of the Atlantic. We heard the words MS-DOS and "IBM compatible" for the first time, when AMSTRAD built its very first IBM compatible called AMSTRAD 1512. But since it was mainly a business machine, little did we care about it. Unfortunately I don't have my Spectrum anymore, It was long out of order and was lost during my moving from my parent's house when I got married on 1995. Cheers mate and stay safe.

Every time I hear of exabytes, it takes me back to SGU, where in one episode, the knowledge of an entire civilization is being downloaded to a ship's computer. One engineer looks at a monitor showing the transfer progress and says, "900 exabytes. Still just a drop in the bucket." www.gateworld.net/universe/s2/epilogue/

I remember when I programmed BASIC on a C64 which had an incredible amount of 64 KB (as long as the thing had power connected). 20 years from now (if it takes that long) we'll have optical PC stations and Exabytes will be as common as Gigabytes today. AI will vastly boost our computer capacity the more it becomes an everyday reality. :)

Yeah and first IBM HDDs... With incredible megabytes on them.... Growing up with machines past 386 even 10 GB seemed more than enough. And then internet came along. And movies just rising from 200-300mb rips to 700... And then 1,36 GB. And still growing. I personally never saw a need for 50GB Blu-ray push but some people need to spend extra cash so why wouldn't someone take it.... And one day even Americans will have a decent internet so whole world will be able to finally progress beyond 720p streaming even being an option....

Yeah, I was thinking about my computers I had so far. In the end of 1997 (Pentium 1/166 MHz/32MB RAM/2 GB HDD) and when I had my second PC in 2001 (Pentium 4/1,8 GHz/80 GB HDD), when I was like: "WOW, nobody (except NASA) would ever be able to fill it totally." And I already thought that, when my father had a PC in 1999 with a 20 GB HDD. :D

technology grows at exponential rate, one day 16eb will fit in our pocket sooner than we thought

handy!

Thank you Sir!

how is that even posible?

@@bersercker evil magic

@@bersercker That tool has been around since the early days of Windows 9x. But the likelihood of needing that tool these days is low. The Windows OS's from the last decade and half or so require NTFS to even run, and the chance you would format an additional drive with FAT32 is going to be about nil. The only thing you could possibly run into this on would be external USB memory sticks. As for whether the tool can do exFAT directly, no it won't. It only works on FAT32 and only to convert them to NTFS. If you want to do exFAT, you would have to backup the stick, reformat with exFAT then copy back the contents. You also can't use the tool to convert from NTFS to something else either.

DaddyKitty04 LTT is very biased about Windows and insults Apple and Linux a lot. That's why I've stopped watching him.

@@unusedaccount9130 Apple sux

@@unusedaccount9130 I've never gave him subscription, I only watch his videos when I need to find some quick info or I am bored. I do not watch him regularily, as most of the time, I just stumble upon his videos by random or as a search result.

@@unusedaccount9130 he explains stuff more related to gaming. Apple sucks for gaming so he keeps his distance from explaining more about apple

@@lightningparadox Good point... you'd think though that Linus Tech Tips wouldn't be mostly for gaming

Actually it is about the limitations (size of single files, size of partitions, support of OS (which is really NOT up2date)), but not about technical aspects or rights at all (e.g. sudo modprobe ./myfile 777)

Try formatting your USB drive to exfat. A Linux distro running the latest kernel (version 5.4) has native exfat support. If your kernel is older than that, you can install exfat support with just a couple of packages. In Kubuntu, for example, the packages are named something like "exfat-utils" and "exfat-fuse", and are in the default repos. I found them by searching for exfat in Muon package manager.

@@chrisschembari2486 that's the plan now, thanks

Wow, thanks

Unlike yours ThioJoe

OMG I WATCH YOU HELLO

@@user-yw8sr3uj1w lol

veRy Godo inTer NT viOed !!11!1!

Hello ThioJoe!

you always have to remember that ext4 is open source, so technically right now there is nothing preventing Microsoft or Apple to integrate support for it into their OS.

Also, the actual physical file storage mediums have changed so much that a file written say on an IBM 1600 Bit Per Inch 9 track tape, then transferred to a 8" floppy, then 5.25 inch, then 3.5, then a Bournouli SCSI, then a CD, then DVD then Thumb drive...and unless some kind soul did this back when, today each of those formats can only be recovered if you find the drive or media at a flea market and retro-engineer it back into a modern system. The ONLY media for that data that is consistent from start to finish is.... the tech manual about it; ie a written page of print.

oh early games, some text files, examples of early IBM JCL, perhaps original source listings of a COBOL ALGOL or FORTRAN coding... this and that :) My point being that we humans like to stash things away for the centuries. and back in the 70s and 80s we stashed on formats that now cannot be read.

It's OK because Linux can use all of the mentioned file systems and many more.

Nice with standards, everybody got their own! :=)

Thanks for this. I have been teaching/lecturing for about 29 years now, for 25 of those years as a member of staff in the University of Nottingham. Now freelance . . .

Mounting ext2 from external storage is tricky but there are mount option to fix your issue : users, noauto, user= , allow_other ... I have a udev script that does it automatically for me. I just plug any disk and my user can read and write it.

Thanks. :)

My pleasure n honour 4me.

Respected n Dear Christopher you have a wonderful n impressive personality n your way of describing the details is so innovative n Great that I would like to offer you the grade of Father of Knowledge n say you the Einstein of today. I m so much impressed by u that ist. time in my life a desire emerged in my heart to wish you n request you to sometimes co ordinate with me on my email if you like n don't have no issue, as we both are usually busy so you won't have any problem due to this co ordination. My personal email id is, drmustansarhussain@gmail.com And Hopefully will wait friendly email from you impatiently. Best Regards, Prof.Dr.Mustansar, Consultant Dermatologist, Malaysia.

❤️❤️❤️❤️

As I don't know the method how to send heart with the pic so I m sending the hearts through the method which I knew. Kindly feel the warmness n acknowledgment to your vast knowledge n greatness. Best Regards.

Thanks John, your kind comments are appreciated.

Hi Bill, glad you sorted it out! :)

Windows NT = Windows New Technology. Windows 2000 originally was named NT5. Then they put a facelift on Windows 98SE and called it Millennium so it looked the same. Thank god XP came out a year and half later to become the best OS for over a decade.

Microsoft's engineers to be precise, such as their other invention "Windows orchestrator"

@@DTMAce XP is still the best software to leave Microsoft's building, *change my mind.*

@@NoorquackerInd Never said it wasn't. But check this out: www.reactos.org/ This is what a modern XP looks like, so to speak. Enjoy.

@@NoorquackerInd that's a low bar to set, but I will say OneNote is amazing.

I formatted my SSD DRIVE for my blackmagic cinema camera ef mount. I formatted it Xfat. How do I now retrieve those videos so I can upload them to Facebook. My pc is windows 10

Few people will understand what you are talking about.

ZFS was mentioned, still disappointed that BTRFS wasn't.

@RDE Lutherie true, it's the basis of so many system !

@Marcin Freitag WOW 2gb 😁

@@serenity6080 🤔😂

I need a defrag simulator for my SSD.

@Marcin Freitag Win 98 had the prettiest defrag screen in the world. I watched that go on for hours when I was a kid.

Teacher Rules !

@RDE Lutherie Yeah. Storage Management is upcoming Chapter. That's why I said that.

WOW!

Besides, you can install a Driver for Windows.

+XFS

No, at the moment it is unreliable. That's why Red Hat removed it from their distribution. And the use of btrfs Raid 5 or better is not recommended and still experimental. Don't use it. ZFS is by far superior and reliable now.

BTRFS has slipped away from the competition. ZFS is just butter.

@@OpenGL4ever Interesting how I hear that BTRFS is terrible and unstable, but my experiences say otherwise. I work with multiple Synology NAS boxes which use BTRFS as standard and I've never had any problems, data loss or corruption. I see how ZFS is superior and should be used when given a choice between the two, but I'm struggling to see why BTRFS is shamed.

Thanks for your kind feedback, appreciated.

Glad it helped.

You must be masochist😎

Thanks.

Early file systems (eg DOS) were limited to eight characters and a three character extension! :)

​@@ExplainingComputers So THAT'S why all those Windows filenames were so confusing!

Not only that..I was in my "watch later"

Thanks. :)

Errors caused by differences in the allowable characters between different file systems seem to be particularly badly handled. In my experience, you tend to either get a non-specific error condition that doesn't help you to identify what the problem is, or it just fails silently. Cloud file storage services can be particularly irritating in that regard.

There R many mistakes, like pretending U need NTFS more than U do, or that it is better or more reliable than FAT32 & so on. I've found the exact opposite is true. NTFS is absolute $hit.

Thanks so much!

Great to hear!

Thanks. I upload a new video every Sunday.

Exfat looks good for exchange partition between systems ... Of external storage. I absolutely require exchange partition on internal drive to support resizing, and exfat does not. I do use exfat, but on small chunks , and consider this space as lost. Yes I yearly resize partitions to move free space around.

Thanks. :)

Thanks for this, and welcome aboard.

I guarantee if he got rid of the bowl cut his view-count would skyrocket.