Optimizing flash memory

I happened upon this forum posting that explains some good methods for optimizing flash memory. Depending how a memory card is formatted it will either hold more data or be able to write it faster. File systems write data in chunks and files almost never use up all the space allocated to it. You can gain more of this wasted space back by making the chunks smaller but at the cost of speed. Having to deal with a lot of smaller chunks takes more time.

Another aspect is the file system used. Today FAT16 has pretty much been phased out in favor of FAT32 because of it's inability to deal with today's large disks. That doesn't mean FAT16 is not a good file system though. It turns out its a bit faster than FAT32 and using the default settings is a good balance between space and performance considerations.