Jeremy Visser wrote:
On Tue, 2009-09-22 at 18:40 -0700, e p chandler wrote:What file system? I thought M$ had a patent on FAT.That's to do with long file names, IIRC. If you write an FS driver that only supports the 8.3 convention, I believe you're in safe waters.
A couple of people at the local LUG say they reformat the thumb to contain multiple partitions. They say it's easier to deal with on their machines. The partitions do not necessarily have to be FAT. The OP could format a partition as HFS and use the appropriate FST, There is nothing saying it can't be formatted using the MSDOS FST (personally I wouldn't bother).
Besides, companies have been shipping Linux distros for years that fully support FAT32 with LFNs without any problems. Well, actually, I might have to eat my words — I think the TomTom debacle was something to do with FAT.
I think you're correct on both points.The more I think about it the more I think an ext3/4 FST might be useful. Another useful utility would be a program to determine the size of a device then allow the user to format as many partitions as they want on there. I can picture the reaction of the border agents when bringing a thumb drive into the States... "This guy has a whole bunch of 32 MB partitions on his 32 GB memory stick. AND I CAN"T READ ANY OF THEM!" ;-)
Later Mike