On Fri, 06 Sep 2013 08:48:07 -0400, Francois Labreque wrote:

> Le 2013-09-05 12:41, Jim Henderson a écrit :
>> On Thu, 05 Sep 2013 09:30:56 -0400, Francois Labreque wrote:
>>
>>> FAT32 can go up to 2TB with 512b sectors and 16TB with 4k sectors.
>>> There are lots of utilities that will allow you to format a disk >16GB
>>> with FAT32, but Windows insists on allowing only NTFS for anything
>>> greater than 16GB.
>>>
>>> So it is indeed Microsoft adopting a "Father knows best" attitude.
>>
>> FAT32 is MS' filesystem, so they get to decide what features to
>> support. Like many companies, they probably want the older stuff to go
>> away, and this is one way of making that happen.
>>
>> Supporting old and outdated technology is expensive, and even a company
>> as large as Microsoft has to watch what their operating expenses are.
>>
>>
> Where are they saving money?  The code to fdisk a drive with FAT32 is
> still there in the code.  In fact, they had to write even more code to
> check the size of the disk before deciding if they would make FAT32 one
> of the available formats.

I would guess that they need fewer staff to support fat32, fewer 
developers to maintain it, fewer testers to test it, etc.  It all adds up.

>>> And, yes I want to complain about it, when the only way to recover a
>>> $150,000 network appliance is by booting a recovery utility off a USB
>>> device to reinstall the OS on the appliance itself.
>>
>> That sounds like the fault of the network appliance manufacturer, not
>> the company that makes your desktop OS.
>>
>>
> Not just this network appliance vendor.  for example, every camera maker
> uses high capacity SD and XD cards that are formatted with FAT32, and
> most of the newer ones are 16GB or more.  There will be a lot of pissed
> off users when they realize that the card they formatted in their laptop
> is unreadable in their camera because Windows said, "I'm sorry Dave, I'm
> afraid I can't do that."

"will be"?  High capacity SD cards have been around for a while.

> All I'm saying is that for various reasons, people MAY need to use
> FAT32, despite the fact that Daddy Microsoft doesn't like it.  And as I
> said, the code is already there in windows, why not let the user use it?
> 
> Which was the original topic:  Microsoft not letting users do things
> they should be able to do.

It's not a question of "letting" users do things, it's a question of 
making a financial decision to go a particular way.  They must not see a 
lot of profit in "fixing" this, because if they did, you can be sure that 
as a business that wants to make money, they'd be on it if there was 
money to be made in it.

> As for this particular instance, it's no longer an issue.  My employer
> has forced all of us off Windows and onto OSX or Linux, for security
> reasons, and I have no problem formatting disks there.

See?  Problem solved. :)

Jim

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