Recommending AGAINST FAT16 formatting

Recommending AGAINST FAT16 formatting

Postby fostytou » Sun Feb 13, 2011 11:55 am

I have a 512mb card formatted to 483MB. I checked the card a week ago and had 135mb of space consumed. Come 4 days later, I had a engine failure, and do not have a log of the event because I was using fat16.

Though the maximum disk storage for fat16 is 2gb, there is a maximum files per folder of 512. I forgot about this limit until today, and though the documentation recommends fat16 for less overhead and faster writes, it does not mention this fact. I have 479 files (including hidden files of which there are none) in the main folder, and would have dropped them into a subfolder had I known.

Image


It has only taken 3-4 months to consume that many files, and I typically drive for 30min+ at a time, and generally only 3 working days out of the week. With more than double what I have consumed the free space, I feel this is a fatal flaw in my implementation.

Another note, I would recommend not stopping your logs until RPM=0 AND speed=0 (or even better, some sort of a countdown parameter if possible). When the engine failed, it may have taken out the crank angle sensor because RPM went to 0 immediately. I had initially thought this was why I was unable to log the event.

I'm pretty frustrated right now, but this is not in any way a slam on the product. This is something that should have been mentioned but I should have also known. In any case, I highly recommend against fat16 unless some sort of fix is put in place to create a subdirectory of logs when file count is > ~400.
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Re: Recommending AGAINST FAT16 formatting

Postby Digitalfiend » Wed Feb 16, 2011 8:47 pm

Silly question and I'm in no way knocking you, but why couldn't you just transfer the files over say every other weekend or even every month? If you just want to do it at your convenience, a second card is cheap and you could just swap them every month or two and backup the nearly full card when you get a chance.
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Re: Recommending AGAINST FAT16 formatting

Postby Sasha_A80 » Fri Feb 18, 2011 2:57 am

Why not just write logs into subdirectory?
There is no limitations in such a case ( FAT32 has no limitations for the root as well ).

Or it is not allowed in software to create logs directly in subfolders ??
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Re: Recommending AGAINST FAT16 formatting

Postby fostytou » Tue Feb 22, 2011 9:35 pm

Digitalfiend wrote:Silly question and I'm in no way knocking you, but why couldn't you just transfer the files over say every other weekend or even every month? If you just want to do it at your convenience, a second card is cheap and you could just swap them every month or two and backup the nearly full card when you get a chance.


Not taken as a knock (yuk yuk), but its not unreasonable to think that I don't need to check my logs very often in the winter. If you format FAT32 this isn't an issue, and it is what I'm recommending. What happens that one time you forget or that one person who doesn't know and... echm... you really could have used a log?

Sasha_A80 wrote:Why not just write logs into subdirectory?
There is no limitations in such a case ( FAT32 has no limitations for the root as well ).

Or it is not allowed in software to create logs directly in subfolders ??


There are no provisions that I know of to log to a subfolder right now. You can just place the logs in a subfolder one at a time... but if you get enough sub folders you will reduce your count of loggable files.

I imagine tactrix probably thinks it is easier / better to use fat32 than program such a module. I probably would too.


------
FYI this explains my file count:
(FAT16 holds a maximum of 512 entries, and the limit can be even lower due to the use of long file names in the root folder).

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/libr ... 40351.aspx
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Re: Recommending AGAINST FAT16 formatting

Postby Sasha_A80 » Wed Feb 23, 2011 1:58 am

fostytou wrote:There are no provisions that I know of to log to a subfolder right now. You can just place the logs in a subfolder one at a time... but if you get enough sub folders you will reduce your count of loggable files.


Bad news...
Any photo camera or writing player use a folder where new files are stored.
This does not limit a number of files created.
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