I'm about to buy a gp2x and then get myself a 4GB SD card to use in it. I recall reading somewhere the gp2x can read cards formatted to one of the 3 file systems named in the poll, i was just wondering what everyone else uses and recommends.

I'm personally leaning towards ext2 being as im a linux user and FAT32 isnt exactly great by anyones standards and obviously FAT16 is of no use with a 4GB card.

So if everyone could vote and possibly leave a comment on what they suggest/think id be grateful. Oh and on a side note, is it worth me getting a smaller card, say around 64MB purely to use for firmware updates?

Thanks in advance.

I would recommend using FAT32, because ext2 automounting on the standard firmware takes a lot of fiddling with system files to get working and then you have the permissions and case sensitivity to work around. I personally have my SD partitioned into a large FAT32 section and a smaller ext2 partition for firmware development.

why include fat16 in the poll?

im using fat32 btw.

Because it's one of the file systems the gp2x supports and not everyone would be using a 4GB card and therefor may not actually be using FAT32/EXT2, thus they wouldnt be able to participate in the poll. As im trying to gather some info all options are needed.

But i do get your point, no point using FAT16 when you can use FAT32, but variety is the spice of life and theres no accounting for taste

why didn't you include FAT8 then, my grandma still uses it!

Eh I use FAT16 on my 2gb SD. Only real advantage with FAT32 is bigger partitions. Actually FAT32 is basically a cludge to allow bigger partitions, rather than anything spectacularly more advanced than FAT16. Or least, so I've been informed.

fat32

and for the sd card for flashing, yeah a 64 would be fine (i use an old 128mb, but the firmwares arent that big)

No one ever tell you first impression last? Guess what my first impression of you now is?

As for everyone else, thanks for the comments and thanks for people that voted, seems like FAT32 is the most popular so i may just use that incase i run into any problems, plenty of help around.

Once again thanks to everyone that voted and gave helpful comments and anyone else that may add helpful comments later

IIRC, a FAT16 disk uses less space for the FAT, leaving more available space for files.
FAT32 on the other hand can handle larger disks, larger files and higher number of files..
There is no FAT8 that I know of, only FAT12. :P

FAT32 allows smaller clusters on disks larger than 32MB (2^16 * 512). This allows small files to be stored more efficiently because a cluster is the smallest allocatable unit on FAT. OTOH, each FAT table is twice the size it would be with FAT16 (and then bigger again because you have more, smaller clusters to keep track of).

IOW, for a 128MB disk with FAT16 you'd have 256KB in 2 FAT tables and 2048 byte clusters, whereas with FAT32 you'd have 2MB in 2 FAT tables and 512 byte clusters. If you have enough files that aren't a multiple of 2048 bytes, you could make up for the extra space used by the FAT tables. For larger disks, the cluster size starts to get ridiculous until you hit the maximum, which IIRC is 32KB clusters (= 2GB partition).

My 1gb card is just "FAT" and my 4gb is FAT32.. my 1gb loads programs faster too, probably due to the speed of the cards though

You definitely get more space with FAT32. It gave me a lot more space with my 4gig .