NTFS vs ExFAT for a non-system SSD

eLPuSHeR said:

Hmm. I think both of you have valid points. Otherwise I don't understand why MS invented ExFAT (maybe useful for thumbdrives though).

There's a lot of things nobody knows why Microsoft invents.

Take the Windows 8 Start Screen for instance. (:

Seriously all this in this thread is a moot point if the drive isn't being accessed by non-Windows OS. If it is go ex-fat if its Windows only go NTFS. Its as simple as that.

In fact it's not even a good idea to use ex-fat for access with non Windows operating systems. Compatibility isn't always guaranteed. And If the non Windows os is Linux one is definitely better off using NTFS which works perfectly with Linux instead of ex-fat. Seriously, I don't know why I should ever format any of my external drives with ex-fat. If compatibility is an issue I go for fat32, otherwise it's either NTFS or in the Linux world it would be ext4.

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

...is used for embedded systems because it is lightweight and is better suited for solutions that have low memory and low power requirements, and can be implemented in firmware.

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.

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.

AveYo said:

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.

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.