An Open-Source exFAT Implementation Reaches v1.0

[rzrx]

here https://github.com/rxrz/exfat-nofuse is the non-fuse read/write kernel module, works on linux kernel v 3.8.11, does need a fix for 3.9.x but will probably be ported to kernel 4.x as a patch with the start of the new mainline
feel free to fork and/or use in any way

[cmurf]

But not even Apple offers formatting USB sticks or hard drives as UDF.

CLI tool only, but is still in 10.8.

man newfs_udf

[cmurf]

Still it looks like the best format if you want to move data between OS X, Win and Linux....

It's for (slow) flash meda. It has a single FAT, instead of two like FAT12, FAT16, FAT32. And it's not journaled. So if you need exFAT ostensibly for a large file system with many files, you're still better off with NTFS and using NTFS-3G from MacPorts to get it on a Mac. It's included in most Linux distros. If you have individual files larger than 4GB, and it's a large file system (but not many files, just large ones) then exFAT is OK but still not as good an option as NTFS.

I'm glad there's an open source option. But to see this format proliferate would be unfortunate. It brings nothing to the table that can't be done with NTFS. UDF would have been a better option for vendors to go with. But not even Apple offers formatting USB sticks or hard drives as UDF. So even though technologically and licensing wise it's superior, for some reason market forces chose the b.s. inferior, IP and royalty encumbered option yet again.

[Redi44]

This exFAT driver is ? just like NTFS-3g ? based on FUSE which means that this driver is no simpler to use under OSX than NTFS-3g.
UDF on the other hand works almost everywhere out of the box.

Look, I've tried both the free and the paid version of the NTFS driver, neither survived update to 10.7 and it also fraked up the "read-only" mode. After that I just gave up...

[frantaylor]

The SD card standard organization should have done a mechanism of indicating a file system, describing what file system is on the card instead of having this nonsense.

This way we can have both:
- for older systems you can use older file systems with less code change
- for newer systems you can use newer file systems with better features, better adapted for the use case.
- makes the standard simpler and easier to implement for hardware makers

I don't understand how this helps the HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS of devices currently in use.

I don't understand how adding cost and complexity to both the drive and the socket "makes the standard simpler and easier to implement". The modifications of which you speak would require an extra signal, which would entail another pin in the socket, another landing on the drive.

You seem to be forgetting that MOST of the SD sockets out there are mounted in VERY VERY DUMB EMBEDDED SYSTEMS. They are cameras and MP3 players and the like. They are NOT general purpose computers, they do NOT have endless RAM for more and more code and more and more file systems. These systems are TOTALLY MINIMAL and there is simply no room or development time or inclination or whatever to make changes like this that have very very little upside and lots and lots of downside.

And besides all that, WHO THE FUCK says you HAVE to put ONE SINGLE PARTITION on the drive??? SD cards are just plain generic block devices, you can partition them and put as many different file systems on them as you want. Heck you can just open the raw block device and treat it as one big file if it flips your switch.

[Awesomeness]

I see that you have no idea how hard is to keep the OS X driver working

This exFAT driver is ? just like NTFS-3g ? based on FUSE which means that this driver is no simpler to use under OSX than NTFS-3g.
UDF on the other hand works almost everywhere out of the box.

[Redi44]

Even NTFS is better than exfat.
Support on all windows systems for the past 12 (?) years or more without patches that may or not be installed, read-only part of the linux kernel (and others), every decent distro ships ntfs-3g for full rw support, OSX can read it too, write support is in there somewhere but disabled by default, and it can also use ntfs-3g.

So really, why bother with exfat, if you can avoid it. Microsoft had a real chance to promote interoperability, and they decided against it. Again.

I see that you have no idea how hard is to keep the OS X driver working

[tuke81]

Windoze does recognize the first partition. I have a lot of sticks with fat32 as the first partition and ext* as the subsequent ones.

Heh this is not always the case, my usb hardrive are not recognized in windows with 2 partitions in it. First one being fat and other being ext3. I have to use ext2ifs software for mounting my fat partition to windows. Maybe it has something to with fact that I have partitioned it under linux.

[curaga]

Windoze does recognize the first partition. I have a lot of sticks with fat32 as the first partition and ext* as the subsequent ones.

[brosis]

What it doesn't have is being allowed to install inside a partition. UDF spec requires that the filesystem occupies the entire storage medium. But in practice, the operating systems ignore this restriction.

Hello.
External media in all Windows versions is disallowed to be partitioned.
There seems to be some kind of a flag for the USB driver, which switches between "harddisk" and "usbdisk" modes.

Under Linux there is no such exception, but any usb drive with partitions will *not* be recognized by Windows.

Steps to reproduce:
1) Attach any USB disk to Windows and open Disk Management
2) Note, that you can't create partitions, regardless which FS.

1) Attach any USB disk to Linux and create at least one unformatted partition without filesystem.
2) Attach this USB disk to Windows and note that the drive will not be recognized.
3) If you delete the partitions, Windows will recognize the drive again and follow restriction 2 above.

Personally, I find the global adaption of JFFS2 would be more than adequate.