USB Flash Drive Comparison part 2 – FAT32 vs NTFS vs ExFAT
So what have we learned from all of this, besides the fact that I need to get a life and out from in front of this computer?
We’ve pretty much learned the same thing we did from the original article really, that OCZ and Super Talent are the drives to own in terms of speed.
In terms of file systems, I would have to call FAT32 the winner only because it’s the most compatible with everything or every other operating system basically.
NTFS of course really isn’t compatible with everything, and ExFat is only compatible with Vista, but I’ve read that it can be easily made compatible with XP, but I haven’t tried it myself.
If we go back and look at the SiSoft Sandra test, the best scores were achieved using ExFat, then FAT32 came in second and NTFS in last.
Sandra 2009 and Diskbench are totally different tests with different results, if we go back and look at the Diskbench tests we can see:
For Copying to the USB drive FAT32 took the least amount of time, with NTFS coming in second and ExFat taking on average the longest time to Copy to the drive.
Copying From and Reading From the drives were very similar in their results though, most of the time the File Systems were close, with at points NTFS taking a bit longer while FAT32 and ExFAT were nearly identical.
So in my opinion the all around best choice is FAT32, or the default for most all USB drives out there today, it seems to give us the best average performance overall.
Comments: Check the whole article. I put the summary here. Flash drives are great for porting around a few small files but transferring 3 gigs drives me crazy. What is the answer? USB3 of course, and buy fast models, and use sync.
If you want to see how miserably slow (or gloriously fast) your USB flash drive is grab USBDview.
So what have we learned from all of this, besides the fact that I need to get a life and out from in front of this computer?
We’ve pretty much learned the same thing we did from the original article really, that OCZ and Super Talent are the drives to own in terms of speed.
In terms of file systems, I would have to call FAT32 the winner only because it’s the most compatible with everything or every other operating system basically.
NTFS of course really isn’t compatible with everything, and ExFat is only compatible with Vista, but I’ve read that it can be easily made compatible with XP, but I haven’t tried it myself.
If we go back and look at the SiSoft Sandra test, the best scores were achieved using ExFat, then FAT32 came in second and NTFS in last.
Sandra 2009 and Diskbench are totally different tests with different results, if we go back and look at the Diskbench tests we can see:
For Copying to the USB drive FAT32 took the least amount of time, with NTFS coming in second and ExFat taking on average the longest time to Copy to the drive.
Copying From and Reading From the drives were very similar in their results though, most of the time the File Systems were close, with at points NTFS taking a bit longer while FAT32 and ExFAT were nearly identical.
So in my opinion the all around best choice is FAT32, or the default for most all USB drives out there today, it seems to give us the best average performance overall.
Comments: Check the whole article. I put the summary here. Flash drives are great for porting around a few small files but transferring 3 gigs drives me crazy. What is the answer? USB3 of course, and buy fast models, and use sync.
If you want to see how miserably slow (or gloriously fast) your USB flash drive is grab USBDview.
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