Formatting HD for USB use with Unitiqute2

I'm pretty sure you want it in FAT32 format.

Why 1gb?

I just use a 32gb 

pendrive. Copy files drag and drop.

Regards.  

Erich

Sorry, my mistake I meant 1TB not 1GB.  Slight difference

So what is the best format, please?

Worth checking that UQ will power a drive.  I think the instructions say that the USB is for pen drives, iPhones etc only. 

There are some threads on the forum on this topic if you have a search.

The drive is a self powered MyBook Ultra.  It is showing as powered (ie its blue light is on) but n-stream shows it as "empty".  I seem to recall that I had a similar problem with a pen drive in the past and it was a formatting issue but i can't recall for the life of me how I needed to format the drive to work

Any help would be most appreciated

thanks

FAT32 should work, equivalent to a USB stick

Thanks.  I thought though that ExFAT was now the one to use generally as it is able to handle bigger data.  Does anyone know if the UQ2 will read this?

I'm sure the Naim support guys are the best people to give you a definite answer. Give them a call, or try support@naimaudio.com

You will need to format it FAT32, but you may need a drive with it's own power supply, rather than powered from the USB.

I have used 1.5TB discs without problem,  but you will need to download a 3rd party FAT32 drive formatter as windows only formats to 32GB. 3rd party ones will format terrabytes.

cheers

The UQ2 USB cannot "see" a 1TB XHD apparently. Steve Hopkins at Naim has used a 128GB one but he and his colleagues are unsure whether a 256GB will work or not (anyone got one and able to give it a try?)

Steve says FAT32 should be the formatting approach

I can confirm that Naim firmware will not read exFAT drives.

There is also a problem with formatting FAT32 over 32Gb on Microsoft platforms after Windows 98.  The format utility (and all other disk partition utilities included with the OS) report disks over 32GB as "Too big for the specified format".  This is a lie.  Microsoft have introduced this arbitrary limitation for no good reason, but simply expect everyone to accept their diktat.

There are some third party utilities that can be used.

I use a 128 GB flash drive formatted fat32 

Thanks Huge and Brubacca. 

256 anyone?

512 SSD (Samsung) here, most likely FAT32 formatted last year, works a treat!

(either it came this way or it was dead easy to format, no special tool used, except perhaps a MAC - maybe Macs don't have the 32 GB constraint, and I do think they can do FAT32 if requested - sorry, it is a while now since I did this).

S.

No Mac's don't have the artificial 32GB constraint - it's one of the few areas where I think Mac OS is technically superior to Windows.

FAT32 would be a very odd disk format for an SSD, they're not primarily intended for cross-platform portable storage.  The main reason not to use FAT32 (provided you have a drive that has wear levelling, which the Samsung 840 series do) is because of its very limited protection from corruption.

I would advise against the use of exFAT for archival or backup (or any critical) storage on removable drives as it doesn't have structural redundancy, hence has no protection from corruption and very limited chance of data recovery.

So why are Microsoft promoting exFAT for external drives instead of removing the artificial 32GB limit from their FAT32 support (maybe something to do with profit from patents)?

JSH, I apologize but I suggested just to use a 32gb pendrive, because is what I give to my wife when she ask for music. In 32 GB we put more than 80cd and for her is enough with 2 pendrives.

But you can play with a 1TB hd if you want. I just reformatted ADATA HV620 MS-DOS (FAT32) threw Bach's Brandenburg concertos (Flac 24/88.2)  into it and play them with the uq2 wonderfully.

Before that I tried same disk formatted Mac OS Extended and didn't work. Display showed msg "initializing input" or something like that for minutes.

Regards.

Erich

If JSH or other member in the forum would like I do a test with the disk, before using it for what was used before, just let me know.

Regards.  Erich

FWIW . . . 

Windows can and will format a drive above 32Gb in FAT32 - just not with any degree of user friendliness. The problem is that the Disk Format tool doesn't recognise disks above 32Gb as FAT32 compatible. I have no idea why that is, it's dumb (and I spent eight years working at Microsoft). But if you use the CMD prompt, it works no problem:

format /FS:FAT32 D:

(where D is the drive you want to format).

If you don't want to do that then there are third party options that work fine; basically they're just a bit of packaging around the above.

The FAT format is largely based on Microsoft patents, ie they essentially own it and license it out for tiny amounts of money. So there's no technical issue, other than the dumb tool. Maybe for Windows 10 they'll move on from the 1990s.

Unfortunately, from Windows 2000 onward, the format command executable itself is restricts FAT32 to 32Gb, using the command line no longer bypasses the restriction.  Even diskpart has the restriction, but in formatting and extending partitions.  If you CAN format FAT32 > 32Gb then you have a replacement format command executable installed in place of the standard Windows 2000/XP/7/8.x one (there are third party utilities that will do this).

And no, Microsoft has no intention of removing the limitation as the patents they have on FAT(12), FAT16 and FAT32 are vulnerable or can be bypassed.  exFat has much stronger patents and is only available licenced (at $300,000! flat fee, or for some customers, per device, negotiable).  Incidentally Microsoft's original FAT format could not be patented because of prior art, the only part of FAT that has a (rather shaky) set of patents is the transparent use of long file-names in FAT16 onward.