The officially official Devuan Forum!

delgado

Member

Registered: 2022-07-14

Posts: 211  

USB Stick, File Size > 4GB

The USB stick was factory formated with 'vfat' and allowed a file size of up to 4GB. I need more.
Formating it with mkfs.vfat /dev/sde1 -S 4096 should allow 16GB file size, but it's still 4GB. Using -S 32768 makes the drive disappear.
Using ntfs (NeanderTal File System) is as always slow as fuck.

Two questions:
(a) How to formate vfat, that can have files bigger than 4GB?
(b) Where is Paragon's (compared to ntfs-3g) super-fast-kernel-ntfs-driver? Or how can it be enabled?

What really makes me sick is the following: That little box I want to feed most likely runs on Linux, but it reads fuck Microsoft file systems only. Such s**t costs hours for nothing.

GlennW

Member

From: Brisbane, Australia

Registered: 2019-07-18

Posts: 644  

Re: USB Stick, File Size > 4GB

If you don't need window$ formatting for window$ machines, format to ext4.

fat32 or vfat has a file size limit of 4096Mb (4gig) that's it, split the file or else...

ntfs-3g package is in "otherosfs main" ver 1.2022.10.3-1+b1

I keep mine at vfat so they work in the car, on the tv and my friends pc's.

---

pic from 1993, new guitar day.

pcalvert

Member

Registered: 2017-05-15

Posts: 214  

Re: USB Stick, File Size > 4GB

Use GParted and format the drive as exFAT. Before doing this, make sure that exfatprogs is installed.

---

Freespoke is a new search engine that respects user privacy and does not engage in censorship.
Another one is called Luxxle.

delgado

Member

Registered: 2022-07-14

Posts: 211  

Re: USB Stick, File Size > 4GB

Thanks for the replies.

The stick is for a TV set-top-box.
4 GB file size is easy to hit. Sadly, ext[3,4] file systems are not recognised.
Tried exfat: File size is good, but the file system is not recognised either.

Found some information on Paragon's "ntfs3" driver, e.g. https://forum.manjaro.org/t/how-to-enable-ntfs3/86049/4

$ cat /boot/config-6.9.12-amd64 | grep -i ntfs3
# CONFIG_NTFS3_FS is not set

Means recompiling the kernel to enable it.

pcalvert

Member

Registered: 2017-05-15

Posts: 214  

Re: USB Stick, File Size > 4GB

It sounds like that TV box may be running a very old version of Linux, in which case it may only support the older filesystems. Try formatting the USB stick as XFS and, if that doesn't work, try ext2.

---

Freespoke is a new search engine that respects user privacy and does not engage in censorship.
Another one is called Luxxle.

s1mple

Member

Registered: 2023-11-13

Posts: 8  

Re: USB Stick, File Size > 4GB

Using ntfs (NeanderTal File System) is as always slow as fuck.

If formatting is slow you can pass -f to mkfs.ntfs to skip zeroing the drive.

pcalvert

Member

Registered: 2017-05-15

Posts: 214  

Re: USB Stick, File Size > 4GB

Found some information on Paragon's "ntfs3" driver, e.g. https://forum.manjaro.org/t/how-to-enable-ntfs3/86049/4

$ cat /boot/config-6.9.12-amd64 | grep -i ntfs3
# CONFIG_NTFS3_FS is not set

Means recompiling the kernel to enable it.

If it turns out that you absolutely must use NTFS, then I recommend using a Liquorix kernel. According to my research, ntfs-3g is enabled in Liquorix kernels.

See: https://liquorix.net/

---

Freespoke is a new search engine that respects user privacy and does not engage in censorship.
Another one is called Luxxle.

delgado

Member

Registered: 2022-07-14

Posts: 211  

Re: USB Stick, File Size > 4GB

Great advice, thanks a lot! Totally forgot about liquorix.

My shiny new computer does not suffer on windows, but the old one has a (more or less) big data partition formated with ntfs. For the fist time the transfer speed is in a reasonable dimension. I'm quite happy with that.

No news on the USB-stick front so far.