60CX SD card FAT or FAT32 ?

[Suscrofa]

Noticed that both formats were accepted by my 60CX. I have no idea if one is better than the other or the same. Do not see any "perceived" difference in speed.

Anyone got an idea ?

[jonners]

I think FAT32 has more parallel channels allowing much faster read/write speeds than older formats of memory card. FAT32 may correspond to the 'SDHC' cards (ie not the plain 'SD' nomenclature). The speed issue isn't really of concern for GPSr use, it's more pertinent to digital cameras and camcorders that need to transfer a lot of data really fast. I may be totally wrong, but that's what I understand from what I've read.

[+DonB]

Noticed that both formats were accepted by my 60CX. I have no idea if one is better than the other or the same. Do not see any "perceived" difference in speed.

Anyone got an idea ?

I'm not sure about SD cards, but a computer hard drive formated for Fat32 uses smaller sectors then FAT, so is more efficent at storing data. I would think the same would hold true with a memory card.

[+klossner]

I think FAT32 has more parallel channels allowing much faster read/write speeds than older formats of memory card.

Um ... no. FAT32 has nothing to do with channels or speeds or anything about the hardware. It's just a different way of clumping the bits in the card together into "clusters." In standard FAT16, you cannot have more than 2 to the 16th power = 65536 clusters, so they have to be big and a lot of space in each one may be wasted. FAT32 allows 2 to the 32nd power clusters and eliminates the space wastage problem, but older devices can't handle it.