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Comment The article is about removable media (Score 1) 71

You are correct with respect to their internal storage.

However, say you want to interchange files among several computers using removable media, such as an SD card, USB flash drive, or USB hard drive. One is a Windows PC that prefers NTFS, another a Mac that prefers Apple's FS, and another a Linux PC that prefers ext4. What file system would you use on the drive?

Comment Re: Unproductive improvement (Score 4, Informative) 71

It has *much* more to do with the memory card's erase block size.

NTFS wants to use a 512 BYTE or 1kbyte allocation unit size. (Dont believe me? Right click your system volume, and choose properties. See what your allocation unit size is.)

This size was selected because it is 1:1 the sector size of original winchester style hard disk drives, which makes those sizes the most efficient to transfer to or from the disk controller.

Modern drives tend to favor 4kbyte sized sectors, but still emulate 512 BYTE ones.

FAT had cluster (allocation unit) sizes quite a bit larger than this. Usually between 4k and 16k, but 32k and 64k clusters are supported.

For early flash memory cards, 32k and 64k cluster sizes were 1:1 what the eraseblock sizes of the flash array were, meaning having the filesystem use that size gave the best possible efficiency with the device controller.

SDHC and SDXC devices though, have erase block sizes that (cough), 'greatly exceed' (cough) what FAT32 can support.

ExFAT however, happily lets you use cluster sizes in the MULTIPLE MEGABYTES size range, allowing the flash makers to still have 1:1 cluster->erase unit parity, and maximized device IO efficiency.

Your camera formats that card as ExFAT because that's what the SDCard Assn demands.

The SDCard Assn demands it, so that they can reliably claim the write speeds written on the top of the card.

NTFS will annihilate flash cards with write amplification, and have piss-poor io performance writing to them.

Comment Re: Why (Score 3, Interesting) 71

Yes, and no.

For PCs of the late 90s and early to mid 00s, yes. 'To promote NTFS.'

For Memory cards?

No.

That's much more closely tied to 'convenience of the memory card consortium'. Specifically, 'It's VERY convenient for the filesystem to have an allocation unit size that is a whole divisible factor of the erase unit size, with 1:1 being *oh so VERY convenient*!'

For devices up to about 32gb in size, this 'convenient coincidence!' Held. Larger devices however, have erase unit sizes far too large for FAT32 to be 'convenient' for.

This is, (among other reasons), my microsoft created ExFAT. It's 'FAT', with 'Absurdly large cluster sizes!'

Exactly what the memory card consortium THIRSTED for.

It also let mictosoft get a shiny new exclusive patent that *everyone* would need to get a license for, which is what *microsoft* THIRSTED for.

This marriage of convenience saw fat32 not having 'official' large volume support for ages.

I would not at all be surprised if this recent change coincides with ExFAT patent expiration.

Submission + - Microsoft increases the FAT32 limit from 32GB to 4TB (windows.com) 2

AmiMoJo writes: Windows has limited FAT32 partitions to a maximum of 32GB for decades now. When memory cards and USB drives exceeded 32GB in size, the only options were exFAT or NTFS. Neither option was well supported on other platforms at first, although exFAT support is fairly widespread now.

In their latest blog post, Microsoft announced that the limit for FAT32 partitions is being increased to 2TB. Of course, that doesn't mean that every device that supports FAT32 will work flawlessly with a 2TB partition size, but at least there is a decent chance that older devices with don't support exFAT will now be usable with memory cards over 32GB.

Comment Re:Ubuntu ... Ugh (Score 1) 48

Have you considered hiring someone on a contract basis to maintain ufraw? If you depend on it, surely it's worth investing in.

My experience with Debian is similar. Much less broken stuff than Ubuntu or Mint. But also the usual problems with things changing in breaking ways between versions, which makes instructions on how to do things outdated within a year or two, 3rd party software stops building and so on... Like you, I have VMs with obsolete versions of Debian and Ubuntu, just to keep certain bits of software working. Meanwhile on Windows I can still install a version of MPLAB from the 90s to build some old firmware.

Comment Re:What stops IPv6 from being universal (Score 1) 72

I looked into IPv6 for home use a while back, and basic stuff like adding new devices to the network and finding them is a bit of a nightmare.

On IPv4 with DHCP it's easy enough to just scan the entire subnet looking for the new device, if you don't know its IP address. With IPv6... There are three of four different ways devices can make themselves discoverable, and Windows support for them is a bit limited.

IPv4 works, it's familiar, it's easy. That's why there hasn't been a big migration. There just aren't big benefits for most people, and there are considerable downsides.

Comment Fictional address (Score 1) 72

The octets of invalid information mark the address as fictional, as opposed to being the live address of a real machine. Telephone subscribers in several area codes started receiving prank phone calls after the 1982 release of "867-5309/Jenny", a song by the band Tommy Tutone containing a live numeric address on the US phone network. This led US TV show producers to start using the 555 (or KLondike 5) exchange, which was largely set aside for fictional use.

Comment Re:Why? (Score -1, Flamebait) 329

Not true.
You can flip the topsoil from one end of the country to the other. Nothing left but desert.
Let the people know they have 2 weeks to overthrow their government or war crimes will happen and the problem will be solved.
Fuck the Geneva convention when the other side does not follow it. End the ability for Iran to do anything violent.

Comment Re:An unintended side effect.. (Score 1) 72

The difference is that if the customer is on IPv6, the customer is more likely to have a globally unique address. This means the customer is at least technically capable of forwarding an inbound port across a stateful firewall, provided the ISP doesn't deliberately interfere with port forwarding the way T-Mobile US (a wireless ISP using 5G NR) does with its home Internet service. The TV commercials don't mention that T-Mobile home Internet is an outbound-only service.

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