SD without FAT

[ekimd]

Is there a cogent reason why the SD card cannot be partitioned without a FAT32 filesystem? From all the benchmarks I've ever seen, EXT4 kills FAT32. However, when I tried using an SD card partitioned with only an EXT4 partition, vold (the volume management daemon) wasn't happy at all.

I can manually mount the volume from the shell, but that does no good as far as android recognizing that the partition has been mounted.

I'd be willing to hack up the vold source code if it would be useful, but I just want to know if anyone has any thoughts or experience on the issue.

Thanks

I'm running 2.6.34.5-cyanogenmod 6.0.0 on my Nexus One

 

[AndroidSPCS]

http://androidforums.com/updates-cupcakes/30431-fat32-waste-space.html

 

[ekimd]

http://androidforums.com/updates-cupcakes/30431-fat32-waste-space.html

True, which is part of the reason why it would be nice to not have FAT on my SD card. I suspect there may be some performance advantages as well.

 

[UncleMike]

The use of FAT32 probably has more to do with ease of access using multiple operating systems for when your device is attached to a computer. File system performance was probably a secondary consideration at best.

 

[Demache]

The use of FAT32 probably has more to do with ease of access using multiple operating systems for when your device is attached to a computer. File system performance was probably a secondary consideration at best.

That's really the only reason its FAT32. Pretty much anything can read it. Even Windows 95. I mean, we have external hard drives formatted in FAT32, even though NTFS, HFS+ and ext4 are far better since they support files larger than 4 GB, among other advantages. However, you lose compatibility when you use these.

 

[ekimd]

And that makes sense if you're running windoze. However, if you're running Linux, there's absolutely no reason in the world to have a FAT filesystem.

But that brings me back to my original question: is there an easy way get android to recognize an SD card formatted as EXT instead of FAT.

 

[ekimd]

bump

 

[Eugene]

Sounds like it could be a feature request for the official android source. I wouldn;t mind switching over too, the one laptop I have at home with Windows still on it just in case I need it has ext2fs so I can read all my drives without having to use fat.