exFat

[blessingx]

There's a lot of conflicting and simply fuzzy information out there on using the exFAT file system in a variety of situations and drive types. Being able to use on Mac and PCs would be desirable and general specs looks good, so anyone have any advice about when to use or avoid using exFAT? Considering for a music backup drive. 

[aardvark baguette]

 

 

exFAT limitations and things to keep in mind

Before you run out and format everything as exFAT, you should understand its limitations—and they aren’t insignificant. exFAT has no file system-level encryption or compression support, and, like FAT32 before it, there is no journaling built into the exFAT file system. This means it has a much higher probability of data loss than with NTFS or HFS+. Since FAT32 and exFAT are common USB stick file systems, TFAT and TexFAT are driver-level additions to FAT32 and exFAT volumes that address the lack of journaling in much the same way that Apple has with HFS+ in OS X. But those are currently only implemented in mobile OSes. That's not it. exFAT also isn’t supported by Time Machine in OS X, which requires an HFS+ volume. Another odd limitation of exFAT support in OS X is that you can’t create a software RAID array in exFAT format, but you can do it with the FAT32 format. It also has very limited permission and ACL support for those who need to isolate different users from certain files. If you're just planning on sharing a video or music library, this isn't a problem. Still, the lack of journaling could be problematic. In the limited testing I did, bundled OS X applications launched fine from an exFAT volume. I wouldn’t recommend installing apps to a non-HFS+ volume, though, since the lack of permissions support could probably cause issues with larger applications. For content developers and designers looking to share files between Macs and PCs, you should have no issues using exFAT as a bridge format. You should be careful when copying older Mac fonts to an exFAT-formatted disk, though. Older Mac PostScript font suitcases have resource fork data that is not retained when copied to non-HFS or HFS+ volumes (HFS is the older pre-OS X file system, for those wondering). So if you’re using anything other than HFS+ disks, it’s best practice to use the Finder to zip your fonts if you’re transferring older suitcase-based PostScript fonts. The OS X Finder’s zip supports resource forks—that’s one of the reasons it creates the __MACOSX folder in zip archives. Newer font formats like OpenType don’t use resource forks, so newly purchased fonts won’t be an issue on non-HFS+ volumes.

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/06/review-is-microsofts-new-data-sharing-system-a-cross-platform-savior/

Edited June 29, 2013 by aardvark baguette

[cutestory]

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