Why FAT Filesystem Sucks
I’ve always read about FAT/FAT32 filesystem being not as efficient as NTFS or EXT3, but all of them only scores theoretically in my mind, until I saw this yesterday (while wondering what filled my PenDrive so much):-
For the uninitiated, this folder contains thousands of GIF/PNG emoticons to be used in various IMs (more to MSN on this one). I’d love to reformat this little thing to NTFS, but the on-board encryption and protection will have to be disabled if I did that :( oh well.
Solution? I zipped the whole folder out :D
That settles it!
Moral? If you’re planning to keep a collection of loads of small files in your USB PenDrive, zip them up! Speeds up transfer, access and saves space!
Another trick I like to do, especially to big fragmented files, is to move them to another drive, then move it back. It will most likely be defragmented.
It’s not a fragmentation issue.
The problem is with the cluster size of the filesystems. In Fird’s case, his files are given blocks of 16 KiB to fill up. Even if the GIF/PNG only needs 100 bytes, it will still occupy 16 KiB of space because of how the disk space is allocated.
8189 files * 16,384 bytes = 134,168,576 bytes
Throw in the overhead for the 73 directories and you’ll have the disk space used.
FAT/FAT32 works fine with small disk space sizes, but they suck when trying to handle disk spaces of above 512 MiB and thousands of tiny files. It’s better to use NTFS or other modern file systems.
Digital cameras can still use FAT/FAT32 efficiently because the photos are huge – the overhead of wasted disk space isn’t as noticeable as having thousands of tiny icons.