FAT has become a "bottom of the barrel" format, that ensures decent cross-platform compatibility(especially with those USB memory sticks). FAT has limitations of 32Gigs, so past that, you need to use FAT32. NTFS has many more good reasons to choose to use that instead.
Now, you could slice up your drive into partitions and format all those different chunks, which won't take a lot of time but it is a nuisace. Each partition can hold over 32 CD's worth of stuff at 16-bit PCM 44.1K no-loss quality, which should be more than sufficient for organizing and sorting, but I would think that would get annoying for an end user(say you, when running a show). Personally, that many partitions would be handy for me, but last thing I want to do come event time is go through different drives to find what I need.
Now, we have different issues, and it has more than you want to deal with. There's not just Fat, Fat32 and the various versions of NTFS. We could go Mac HFS or HFS+, journalled or non-journalled, but then we need to get licensing from Apple to embed that into the chipset. Or, should we go to some open standard? Maybe an open 9660? Maybe some other Linux/Unix based formatting? Stall, FAT is mac/PC/linux compatible for read/writing with modern OS's. Common ground makes things a lot easier.
Once you start adding in additional layers, the device becomes more complicated, even if it's just stuff being added to a ROM in the unit because you have to roll in the latest versions of NTFS(there are at least 6 versions) as well as FAT32 and FAT.
Ideally, what the hell are you going to need with more than 32 CD's(realistically more like 40) worth of music? Notice I'm not saying 40 CD's, but rather an equivalent amount of music. It's critical. Let's just say 10 songs/CD, taht's 400 tracks, MORE than enough for any gig, but could limit your requests. Unless you're rolling for days at a time, you SHOULD be fine. You could sort your stuff any way you want onto sticks.
Then again, so many DJ's don't give a crap about quality and just rip their music to MP3. Playing anything short of FULL CD quality(which means NO MP3 at ANY quality setting, because the all suck) is a vast disservice to us all.
There's nothing wrong with things like Tractor Pro or Serato Scratch, or some other things I've seen. In the hands of a skilled operator/DJ who knows the software, it can be a very powerful and usefull option. I worked side by side with a DJ at a recent event, and I was literally standing by him most of the time to watch him work. I forget what he was using, it was mac based. He was working that relatively effortlessly. Of course, use the vinyl based options for control because CD decks can have roll-offs and filters in the AD/DA converters, which can screw up control signals.
Yes, 32GIG sticks are a bit expensive. I know, I was just looking the other day for storing a single project onto, and I decided it wasn't worth the costs right now. Of course, prices can and will drop.
If you ask me, it sounds to me like you didn't do due dilligence in advance. Then again, I can't find a manual to download to read either.
I do see the "problem", and it's one that bothers me and what let to you being angry. First the product description says "USB hard drive" To me that says "USB thumbdrive/stick or a hard drive accessed via a USB interface". I dislike this term. TO me, a hard drive is a magnetic device using rigid metallic plates, as opposed to floppy disks that use a flexible material(such as mylar).
A USB memory stick or "thumb drive" is a solid state device that works more like a FLASH ROM-type deviec. These really need to be clarified.
Can you scan in part of the manual or find me a link to the manual? My internet sucks right now and I'm lucky to be able to get anything done.