Windows 10: NTFS vs ExFAT for a non-system SSD

ExFAT was designed as an updated FAT file system for use with flash drives. It could have been called FAT64 but I suppose the marketing people thought ExFAT was better. It solves many of the problems of FAT32 but it still has it's roots in FAT16 which was a product of the 1980's and designed for very limited hardware. ExFAT has a few advantages over NTFS when use with flash drives, although some are now more theoretical than real. NTFS was never designed for removable drives because when it was developed there were none in common use, except of course for floppy drives.

For internal hard drives NTFS remains king. And it seems to be favored as well for USB hard drives. NTFS is now an aging file system and will eventually be replaced, but not by ExFAT.

 

ExFAT was created for Windows CE 6.0 in 2006 which is used for embedded systems. It is a optimized file system for those platforms, as well as flash drives/memory cards. It is not an optimized file system for HDDs or SSDs. (Flash drives/memory cards are not the same thing as modern SSD drives. They may use the same memory technology but that is all they have in common.)

exFAT - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Unfortunately (or not) ExFAT is not widely supported/accepted. Specially outside the Windows ecosystem.

 

That's why I've been using ExFAT on Android since nov2013... and no trouble under various Linux using fuse.
Not being born yesterday, I still remember the pain in the arse NTFS was. ExFAT is no where near that.
I would suggest everybody to first try it, then post about it. Reading wikipedia is not the same thing.
No further comment on FUD spread in this thread.

 

A good use for ExFat is for USB thumb drives, Jumping over 4 GB file size barrier but compatible with Linux etc.

 

But that's also the only situation where I would use it. Under any other circumstances fat32 is just the simpler, more obvious choice. Using fat32 on an USB drive or SD-Card means you can plug it into anything and it will be recognized. And normally I haven't got files bigger than 4 GB on those drives (for example on my phone). And on my devices everything that contains such huge files is either NTFS or Ext4.

 

You don't have to use FUSE to use ExFAT on Linux.

I use this kernel module to read/write ExFAT filesystems when the need arises.
dorimanx/exfat-nofuse · GitHub


The point is though, that NTFS read/write is supported in the kernel, and is enabled by default on most distributions.
ExFAT however is not supported in any way in the kernel, and requires compiling a third-party kernel module and inserting it into the kernel. This is only feasible on a system which you have total control over, and if you understand how Linux, compiling, and kernel modules work.

Android can only use ExFAT if the OEM has purchased a license for the filesystem. Since android uses the Linux kernel, I'm sure you can cross-compile to module I linked above and slip it into the firmware, but that requires a rooted phone, and far more knowledge of Android/Linux/Whatever architecture processor your device has.

 

Not to hijack this thread, but since you guys are so knowledgeable on the subject, I thought I might pick your brains?

Which would be best to use for external USB 2TB or 3TB hard drives, storing photos, to swap between a Windows machine and a Mac? and would there be complications with any of them? I have a situation where raw photos would be uploaded from a camera to a Windows machine, transferred to Mac for certain processing, and then transferred back to the Windows machine.

TIA for your help.

 

I would definitely NOT use ExFAT. I have had no end of problems with OS X corrupting ExFAT and having to repair (Google "osx exfat corrupted"). You could use FAT32 if you are sure that you'll never want to save anything bigger than 4GB (which you inevitably will at some point).

Previously I have used NTFS (as I use Windows more) but at the moment in El Capitan there is no free NTFS driver (NTFS-3G doesn't work) so currently I'd format your drive HFS+ on OSX. I use Windows HFS+ driver from HFS+ for Windows® 8/8.1 Free Edition to access HFS+ partitons and it works fine on Windows 10 and is free.

You might want to consider formatting most of your drive NTFS (Mac can read NTFS fine) and making a small HFS+ scratch partition (or FAT32 if you don't want to install another driver) to transfer the photos back. You could then copy them to NTFS partition from Windows after processing.

 

I agree with halasz answer.

Partition the disk, use NTFS for a majority of the space. Use smaller partition for when you process the photos on OS X.


An alternative could be to use the UDF filesystem, but halasz's answer is a far better idea.

In windows to format a volume as UDF use, where #: is your drive letter:
Code: Format #: /FS:UDF[/quote]

 

Thank you both. I will make some recommendations to my friend about this.

 

Whith what purpose ExFAT was created?

 

Sorry, wrong forum thread