More > JRiver Media Center 30 for Windows

Does Media Center care how a hard drive is formatted?

(1/3) > >>

macdonjh:
For use on a Windows computer, does Media Center care between FAT32, ExFAT, some other hard drive format?  What about partition sizes, is there such a thing as too big or too small?

JimH:
No.

Awesome Donkey:
In general, no, it doesn't matter.

But there are a few things to be aware of with the various file systems, which can be very technical but I'll keep it simplified. For example exFAT, while can be used on normal hard drives, is more for flash-based storage like SD cards. Another example is you may encounter file size limitations (above 4GB) with FAT32 or issues formatting above 32GB in Windows (which you'd need a third-party app to do it). If you're intending to use FAT instead then go for exFAT over FAT32 due to the limitations it FAT32 has.

My personal recommendation is if you're only going to use it with Windows only I'd actually go with NTFS over FAT32 and exFAT.

eve:

--- Quote from: Awesome Donkey on January 31, 2023, 07:56:42 pm ---In general, no, it doesn't matter.

But there are a few things to be aware of with the various file systems, which can be very technical but I'll keep it simplified. For example exFAT, while can be used on normal hard drives, is more for flash-based storage like SD cards. Another example is you may encounter file size limitations (above 4GB) with FAT32 or issues formatting above 32GB in Windows (which you'd need a third-party app to do it). If you're intending to use FAT instead then go for exFAT over FAT32 due to the limitations it FAT32 has.

My personal recommendation is if you're only going to use it with Windows only I'd actually go with NTFS over FAT32 and exFAT.

--- End quote ---

This.

exFAT is fine for external 'sneakernet' stuff but really not a great idea for actual 'in use' storage. exFAT lacks journaling, which while not essential for media storage *can* lead to issues if say, a write is in progress and power or connection is lost. I've seen that take out other files or causes issues reading the entire partition. Its not usually like, unrecoverable but it can pose issues. Easier to save yourself the headache and use NTFS.

macdonjh:
Excellent, thank you to everyone. 

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page