FAT Reorder

Modify the order of files on a FAT file system so that they will appear in a specified order.

I created a USB drive filled with music to play in my car radio that has a USB input. When I went to play the music in my car I saw that the files were not playing in the order I expected. The files played in the order they were placed on the USB drive rather than in order by file name or track number. I needed a utility to write the files onto the USB device in a specific order that I could determine. Since it wasn't a difficult job I wrote this quick utility program.

FAT Reorder image

Note: This program only works on FAT or FAT32 formatted drives. NTFS formatted drives behave differently so the technique used by this program won't work on drives formatted using that file system.

I haven't had an opportunity to write up any documentation yet, but the program is fairly easy to operate.  The program will permit sorting the folders on the drive, as well as the files within those folders.  One thing to keep in mind is that the sort button will sort the files by file name, not by any tags within the files.  If a different sort order is needed the user will have to use the up/down buttons to manually put the files into the desired order.

The FatReorder software is available for download here.


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