Shareaza

I have a fat32 formatted partition that I use for storing bulk media etc. so as to be able to access it easily from Linux which I play with from time to time. I decided to put my downloads folder here, and shareaza has been saving to it since. I just tried to download a file that exceeded the 4GB file-size limit, and found that shareaza simply downloads endlessly, only ever verifying 4GB of the file, the rest of the data, is simply ignored and downloaded again. While I understand this is a dying problem, as I now realize that Linux handles NTFS well enough most of the time, and I can find a better solution if I ever find it doesn't, I can't imagine it would be hard to have shareaza check the file-system format, and respond better to limits. even if its simply blocking downloads that are too big, or blocking FAT as the download location altogether. I have solved the immediate issue just fine, but the GB's I let flow into nothingness before I realized there was a problem say this should be addressed. again, doesn't need to be fancy, just better than the infinite download.

The FAT32 file system does not support files bigger than 4GB AFAIK, so you can't save such a file on that drive, as the content data cannot be addressed - which is why Shareaza cannot save the content and therefore re-downloads it every time...

He knows that. His request is that Shareaza should not try to do something that obviously can't work.

This is a bug, not a feature request, btw.

Oh, then I must have misread what he posted... my apologies...

yeah, I guess it just struck me as not so much needing to be addressed as a bug due to the declining usefulness of FAT32, and simply add in a warning or something if you're trying to use it, but I suppose plenty of external drives still ship formatted to FAT32, so I guess maybe it should really be properly addressed. on that note, per-download save locations would probably be the best way to address it, and a much appreciated feature as well.

Another (but not generally known... I keep meaning to update Wikipedia) inherent limitation of FAT32 is that a single individual folder cannot hold more than 16383 long-file-name files/folders (or 65534 short 8.3 names, I believe) directly. Of course, more files can be spread throughout multiple subfolders as long as the individual folder limit is not reached . The very few who might stumble across this limit will certainly be confused by the 'Disk Full' message, which belies the real cause.

FAT32 should be reserved for those who can live with the known limits and for some reason need the speed or backward/cross compatibility it offers.

The adventurous can look into exFAT (and the super-safe TexFAT overlay for exFAT).