> I heard many bad things about ExFat, that is not safe and invitation for failures?
This is very generic. The main issue is that it doesn't support journaling so crashes / power loss could affect it. I'd use it for a shared internal drive, but if your point is to have it as an external/portable one, it could lead to consistency issues.
> that depends, exFAT lacks permissions and symlinks.
The lack of permissions is why it works as a portable file system. If you've ever tried to use, say, ext for this it becomes clear why nobody does that.
No, but FAT32 does. Exfat, on the other hand has a file size limit of 16 exibibytes. That, combined with exfat's cross-platform mounting (NTFS has a lot of limitations in this regard) makes it a superior formatting system for flash based offline file transfer.
>TIL: In 2019, Microsoft released the exFAT [1] specs [...] I.e. exFAT should now be preferred over FAT/NTFS for media used across different operating systems.
You seem to be very optimistic about how fast these get implemented into embedded devices.
> exFAT is probably better in terms of cross platform compatibility and addresses a lot of the limitations of FAT while remaining portable.
Still it is a shame that we're kept back literally decades when it comes to file exchange due to corporate culture polluting every corner of IT. Ensuring file export options plus file formats full documentation, should be among the most important requirements any software should satisfy to be even considered for professional use.
> It's 2017, and the ONLY filesystem that will seamlessly work with macOS, Windows and Linux at the same time is FAT, a filesystem which is almost 40 years old.
Universal Disk Format? [1]
ExFAT can also be used on all currently supported versions of Windows & macOS and added to Linux very easily via a package manager.
You could argue there isn't any need for a cross-platform filesystem these days. It's often easier to simply transfer files over Ethernet, Wi-Fi or even the Internet.
> Are you really trying root as exfat? Will never work. A linux filesystem must support file ownership and access rights per file, which exfat doesn’t. Linux runs only from ext4, btrfs, xfs or such.
>Finally, we get a non-journaled semi-cross-platform filesystem. fat32 just wasn't cutting it... /s
Hope you never had to store files larger than 4GB otherwise FAT32 would not work for you. (Before you respond with "that's what archive files / files splitting are for", not every device that takes files on an SD card and supports FAT32 has a way to join files on the fly/a way to read archived files.)
> Is it really necessary to keep dragging FAT along?
Anything involving embedded and without deep pockets has no other option, FAT (sadly) still is the least common denominator. Some speak ExFAT, but not sure how good the tooling support is outside of Microsoft, and there are still patent concerns.
How does this square with Microsoft removing or deprecating exFAT support from Windows [0]? Isn't the whole point to have a file system with cross-platform support? I mean, is Microsoft being nefarious by allowing exFAT to come to Linux while at the same time beginning to drop support in Windows? Or am I reading too much into this?
[0]: I came across the comment below yesterday and was able to verify that any mention of exFAT has been removed from the official "diskpart" documentation.
> Well it appears that Windows 10 support for exFAT has been dropped in a recent update. The option no longer appears in the drive format dialog, nor does it appear in the diskpart utility. Any mention of exFAT has been expunged from the official diskpart documentation making me believe that Microsoft has officially terminated support for it, even so I cannot find any official announcements or confirmations of that. source - https://superuser.com/a/1420186
I gave you a succinct explanation of why exfat won't work everywhere, and you are basically denying that it's relevant. This attitude is reminding me what being a Microsoft employee was like.
>Since Apple and Microsoft categorically refuse to implement any of the many featureful existing filesystems, one is stuck with archaic NTFS (with no file permissions) or FAT (with less than 4gb files) to keep data.
xFAT which I already mentioned is supported and doesn't have a 4GB limitation. You can have up to 128 pebibytes (which should be enough for everybody: that's ~144 petabytes).
Straight from their FAQ:
We see emFile customers asking for solutions for bigger files. Implementing exFAT is not an option for us, as it is patent encumbered. SEGGER would need Microsoft's permission to implement and offer it, and our customers need to deal with Microsoft again to be able to use it in their products. This can be time-consuming and also expensive. We feel there should be a free alternative. The more popular BigFAT becomes, the better.
I guess using anything but FAT would make it hard for their developer base.
> It's a real pity everyone can't agree on a standard to replace FAT32. :(
Every OS in the universe supports UDF now, and its the only real ubiquitous non-proprietary filesystem. I use it on all external storage that I cannot guarantee will be touching Linux machines exclusively.
> It's a bit of a shame Microsoft didn't push and open up exFAT earlier and allowed FAT32 to become an issue again, only with removable flash drives and memory cards this time
Erm, because that was the idea? SDXC is a big racket and Microsoft has been collecting patent fees from any kind of consumer device that's capable of reading memory cards thanks to the filesystem requirements in the standard.
I've been doing this for a few years now. It just doesn't support some stuff, like permissions, but for just a pile of files, it's fine.
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