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[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]

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.

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. 

[macdonjh]

Fun fact: turns out the guy I was trying to help figured out he'd forgotten to format his brand new USB drive, so apparently, MC doesn't like Seagate's default formatting, whatever that may be.

When I first started using MC I formatted my USB drive using exFAT for use with a Mac Mini with the thought I could unplug the drive from my media server and plug it in to any other computer.  Glad I did that, my current media server is a Windows computer.  Though I also installed a NAS for our media files.  I can't remember how those drives are formatted.

[macdonjh]

We're still having trouble, with movie files specifically.  With his video files (almost all are .mkv files, ripped from DVD) he gets sound but no video.  He says his audio files play as they should.   Any ideas?

During set-up, when asked what file types/ associations he wanted he chose all of them.  My thought was he didn't check the box for .mkv.
 He then connected his USB drive where he stores his media files and <imported>.

The other question I asked was how he copied the movie files from my NAS to his USB drive.  He used Windows (I don't know if he dragged and dropped or used ctrl-C/ctrl-V or what).  I double checked; asking if he used the MC Move/Copy/Rename utility.  He said he didn't.

[Awesome Donkey]

Probably going to need info about the GPU the device playing back the videos has.

[eve]

We're still having trouble, with movie files specifically.  With his video files (almost all are .mkv files, ripped from DVD) he gets sound but no video.  He says his audio files play as they should.   Any ideas?

During set-up, when asked what file types/ associations he wanted he chose all of them.  My thought was he didn't check the box for .mkv.
 He then connected his USB drive where he stores his media files and <imported>.

The other question I asked was how he copied the movie files from my NAS to his USB drive.  He used Windows (I don't know if he dragged and dropped or used ctrl-C/ctrl-V or what).  I double checked; asking if he used the MC Move/Copy/Rename utility.  He said he didn't.

This is a really dumb suggestion but is it possible he isn't on a 'display' view and thus not seeing video?

[macdonjh]

Probably going to need info about the GPU the device playing back the videos has.

I can get that and post it.

[macdonjh]

This is a really dumb suggestion but is it possible he isn't on a 'display' view and thus not seeing video?

I'm not sure what you mean.  Whenever I hit <play> for a video file the view switches automatically to whatever file I want to watch.  I think my son did the same basic, non-custom settings, set-up I did.  To put it another way, "There's a way to have JRiver play a video file and not display the video?"  That would be weird to me. :-)

[macdonjh]

His graphics card is an Nvidia 3080.