Linux's exFAT File-System Driver Can Now "FSCK" As Fast As Windows

[torsionbar28]

unzip, strip, touch, finger, grep, mount, fsck, more, yes, fsck, fsck, fsck, umount, sleep....

[skeevy420]

Probably because for Linux users, having first-class exFAT support is much more urgent than NTFS. Dual boot Linux/Windows installations seem to be the only real major use case for NTFS in Linux but that is much less prevalent these days.

Another possibility is that NTFS is ancient code with lots of accumulated cruft that has probably never been revised or optimised since. I've heard second-hand stories about especially the mutex / locking architecture being borderline insane. At the same time, NTFS is a core part of their expensive Server OS offerings and they may not want to disclose such gory reality to their "enterprise" customers. This is pure speculation of course.

That and both ZFS and BTRFS have up-and-coming Windows drivers. At this point in time since NTFS support is good enough at the userspace level I suspect a portion of us dual-booting Linux geeks would rather just wait on one of those to mature and use it over waiting on a (MS provided) NTFS driver in the kernel...or they've moved on to using dual GPUs and virtualization.

[skeevy420]

It's a good idea to chkdsk before and after a fsck.

[om26er]

Oh, FSCK!

[jacob]

Now that Microsoft has joined the Open Invention Network, why hasn't there been any push to upstream an NTFS driver? I believe the day they joined the OIN, a patchset went out for exFAT, but no NTFS.

Probably because for Linux users, having first-class exFAT support is much more urgent than NTFS. Dual boot Linux/Windows installations seem to be the only real major use case for NTFS in Linux but that is much less prevalent these days.

Another possibility is that NTFS is ancient code with lots of accumulated cruft that has probably never been revised or optimised since. I've heard second-hand stories about especially the mutex / locking architecture being borderline insane. At the same time, NTFS is a core part of their expensive Server OS offerings and they may not want to disclose such gory reality to their "enterprise" customers. This is pure speculation of course.

[doublez13]

Now that Microsoft has joined the Open Invention Network, why hasn't there been any push to upstream an NTFS driver? I believe the day they joined the OIN, a patchset went out for exFAT, but no NTFS.

[tildearrow]

Wait I thought it was chkdsk on Windows? (not fsck?)

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Linux's exFAT File-System Driver Can Now "FSCK" As Fast As Windows

Samsung engineers responsible for the modern exFAT file-system driver for Linux have updated the adjoining "exfatprogs" user-space programs around this file-system. Notable to exfatprogs-1.0.4 is much faster "fsck" file-system checking support...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Linux-exFAT-Progs-1.0.4