SanDisk® Global Customer Support (India)
File Allocation Table is a primary computer file system for various operating systems, mostly DOS, including DR-DOS, OpenDOS, freeDOS, MS-DOS, Microsoft Windows (up to and including Windows Me). FAT is also used for removable flash drives and memory cards.
File system is a method for storing and organizing computer files and the data they contain to make it easy to find and access them. The chart below shows in what FAT system a flash drive or memory card should be formatted.
| up to 2GB | 4GB-32GB | 64GB and above | |
| Default format for memory cards and flash drives | FAT16 | FAT32 | exFAT |
NTFS
NTFS is the standard file system of Windows NT, including its later versions Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2003, and Windows Server 2008, Windows 7 and Windows 8. NTFS is intended for use in Windows system drives (Hard Disk Drives and Solid State Drives).
NTFS has several improvements over FAT such as improved support for metadata and the use of advanced data structures for reliability, and disk space utilization, plus additional extensions such as security access control lists and file system journaling.
Notes for Flash Drives:
- Formatting the flash drive as NTFS will make it unwriteable on a Mac computer. Most Mac computers can read NTFS, but not write.
- NTFS is a journaled file system, this creates more read/write activities. Therefore, it MAY decrease life expectancy of your flash drive.
- Once the device is formatted as NTFS, you MUST use "Safely Remove Hardware" to remove your device.
