What is the best format type for my Silicon Power 128 GB USB 3.0 flash drive?

[jbgarcia]

I use it to store the following: FLAC and mp3 (music), PDF and cbr/cbz (documents), mp4 and mkv (video), and jpg, png and bmp (image) files. I sometimes connect it to my Android tablet and stream the music and video files directly (not by copying first). It's currently formatted as FAT32, but the problem with that is that sometimes I need to copy single files that are larger than 4 GB (sometimes up to 40 GB) to it, to transfer from my laptop to another PC. So I just wanted to know whether exFAT or NTFS or another type would be best for my type of usage. I would prefer the type that allows for good transfer speed (for streaming) and won't wear out my drive prematurely (as I read that NTFS does constant writing and could wear out my drive too fast).

 

[getochkn]

Depends what your tablet will read, and that's probably only FAT32. Possibly exFAT but doubt it and not NTFS for sure. If you need it for your tablet, maybe just buy another drive. Odd's are your tablet isn't USB 3.0 anyways, so you won't really get any benefit from that anyways.

 

[Mugglensu1984]

All removable drives are FAT32. It's the default format and ensures greatest compatibility across most platforms.

 

[2Be_or_Not2Be]

It's currently formatted as FAT32, but the problem with that is that sometimes I need to copy single files that are larger than 4 GB (sometimes up to 40 GB) to it, to transfer from my laptop to another PC.

I think the most critical requirement is being missed - he has to transfer individual files larger than 4GB. So that eliminates FAT32, which only supports individual files up to 4GB. Either exFAT or NTFS can support the larger size.

Ignore the warning about "NTFS does constant writing and could wear out my drive too fast" - that won't really affect you. You would have to do an astronomical amount of writes before that you could "wear out" a drive with a NTFS filesystem. If you do choose NTFS, just turn off Indexing on the volume if you're really worried/paranoid.

Frankly, the most you can do to keep that flash drive from "wearing out too fast" is simply not to fill it full. Keep at least 20-25% free space on it, and you'll allow the flash drive to automatically spread its writes to different cells (called "wear-leveling"), which will keep that drive operating at peak performance for a long time. An easy way to make sure you keep fresh cells available is to partition it to a smaller size than full capacity (like formatting it to 100GB).