Make 4GB memorysticks faster than default
February 27, 2008
Now that high capacity memory sticks are getting cheaper and people use it for all kind of apparels like digicams, phones or even ebook readers, they often find that these higher capacity (more than 4GB) memorysticks seems slower than the lower capacity ones (up to 2GB).
This is because the higher capacities memorysticks are formatted in FAT32 by default. Although this format is better than the old FAT16 in the sense of disk slack and filesize limits, it’s slower for read and writes. Especially for the gadgets with lower processingpower than a PC.
If you’re experiencing this problem, you might want to format the stick to FAT16. This will speed up the read and write process tremendously.
If you’re using XP, just open command prompt (XP-explorer won’t allow you to format to FAT16 on higher capacity cards) and type in:
format z: /q /FS:FAT /x
Where z is your memorystick driveletter.
You will be asked some confirmation questions. Answer as appropriate and try it out.
If you’re using a Mac or running Linux, you should be smart enough to know how to format a simple stick, so I won’t even bother explaining.
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When attempting to do this with a Sony 8 gig memory stick, the message recieved is:
The volume is too big for FAT16/12.
Comment by PJ — May 21, 2008 @ 10:52 pm