Head-Fi.org › Forums › Equipment Forums › Portable Source Gear › iPod Classic HFS vs. FAT32
New Posts  All Forums:Forum Nav:

iPod Classic HFS vs. FAT32

post #1 of 3
11/1/12 at 4:22am
Thread Starter 

Hello, 

Is there any advantage in formatting my iPod Classic one way or the other?

The only advantage I know is that FAT32 is visible on both windows and Mac

 

But, is HFS is better performances wise?

 

 

Thanks,

Eli

Reply

Gear mentioned in this thread:

post #2 of 3
11/28/12 at 7:43pm

As far as I know, Apple designed the iPod to work as FAT32. While it will work as HFS/HFS+, I don't see any reason for it to work any better or have performance boosts from being formatted differently.

 

I have a 80 gig 5th generation Classic that I formatted with HFS purely because I use it as an external drive, and the maximum filesize on FAT32 is 4 gigs. My primary listening iPod, a 7th gen 160 gig Classic, is on FAT32. I haven't noticed any difference performance-wise between the two.

Reply
post #3 of 3
11/29/12 at 11:36am

At the speeds you are playing audio off the media, there isn't going to be any significant difference between FAT and HFS (or ext4, or...). You may see a significant improvement with a more modern filesystem than FAT when copying large amounts of data to or from the drive.

 

Edit -- The file-size limit on FAT is unlikely to impact you for music unless you are using tar or the like to create large archives. Video may push it.


Edited by jeffsf - 11/29/12 at 11:40am
Reply
New Posts  All Forums:Forum Nav:
  Return Home
  Back to Forum: Portable Source Gear

Gear mentioned in this thread:

Head-Fi.org › Forums › Equipment Forums › Portable Source Gear › iPod Classic HFS vs. FAT32