exFAT for XP users.

[Mychael]

Could not decide the right forum for this so settled on General.
Anyway really for those still useing XP as already supported in Win7 and Vista.

Go here:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/955704

Description self explanatory. The install went fine for me.

 

[clifford_cooley]

What are some of the reasons one would want an exFAT partition?

I'm at a loss as to why one would need this file system.
Would this make things easier to share between MS and Linux?

 

[Mychael]

From what I understood after reading the short article which gave the link I posted. exFAT is most beneficial for formatting the larger capacity flash drives which are available now.
It made no reference to cross platform compatibility other then if a flash drive is formatted to exFAT then XP cannot read it unless you have the patch installed.

 

[clifford_cooley]

All I really know is that the whole idea in using FAT32 with flash drives is so Pre-XP systems can read them. From what I understand, exFAT is an extension to the FAT32 file system for greater capacities. This is shocking because if XP cannot read the exFAT partitions without a patch then neither would the Pre-XP systems.

Looking at my query further, if one only uses XP, Vista, or 7 there would not be any need for a non-NTFS partition. My only other thoughts would be a cross-platform scenario.

 

[Mychael]

The article mentioned that NTFS is not as efficient for flash media as exFAT is, NTFS (on a flash drive) will make it perform slower although it did not say to what extent it has this effect.

 

[TrainableMan]

NTFS, though more secure, on flash/pen drives & SSD causes more wear-and-tear than a FAT file structure, meaning they burn out faster so exFAT provides an extended FAT structure as an alternative to NTFS for referencing larger drives.

http://www.sevenforums.com/installation-setup/7627-exfat-format.html

Based on reading that, just don't try to install W7 OS on a exFAT formatted drive.

 

[Mychael]

Tried it on one of my flash drives and true to it's description I now have an extra option for formatting a drive to exFAT. Worked fine.

 

[catilley1092]

I've had a couple of larger drives (16GB) formatted as exFAT, and at the time, they both worked fine. I lost one of them, and the other is in a fancy plastic case, it makes a good paperweight.

But I no longer care for flash drives of that size. 4GB ones seem to hold up longer, and are of better quality, at a reasonable price. Larger ones, if they are good, costs a lot, for a few more bucks, you could have a pocket sized backup drive, such as a WD Passport.

Usually, when you get one of the larger ones (16GB or more) for less than $20, you've been screwed. The quality isn't there for that price.

But as far as exFAT goes, I've used it a little, but not long enough determine a difference from FAT32 or NTFS.

Cat

 

[Core]

Would this make things easier to share between MS and Linux?

I don't see how, since Linux supports both FAT and NTFS just fine.