exFAT Versus FAT32 Versus NTFS

Contributor Icon Contributed by davak Date Icon February 27, 2008  
Tag Icon Tagged: Microsoft Vista

With Vista SP1 Microsoft has introduced a new file system. Extended File Allocation Table (exFAT) is the successor to the old FAT32 file system. What are the advanatages and disadvantages to this new file system? What are the differences between exFAT and FAT32? When is exFAT preferred over NTFS?


Microsoft has released the exFAT file system with Vista SP1. This file system that previously had been rumored to be released with the original Vista is finally available to the public on a wide scale. This article will explain what issues with FAT32 that exFAT fixes. Surprisingly to many people, exFAT even may be better than the much loved NTFS in some circumstances.

FAT32 is the file system with which most windows users are most familiar. Windows first supported FAT32 with Windows 95 OSR2 and has increased support for it through XP.

FAT32 has multiple issues that modern systems can experience:

    - By default windows systems can only format a drive up to 32 GB. Additional software works around this issue. When formatted at these bigger sizes, FAT32 becomes increasingly inefficient.

    - The maximum file size on a FAT32 formatted drive is around 4 GB. With DVD and high resolution DVD formats now available, this limit is commonly noticed.

    - Dealing with fragmentation and free disk space calculations can become painfully resource intensive in large FAT32 systems.

    - A FAT32 directory can have 65,536 directory entries. Each file or subdirectory can take up multiple entries; therefore, FAT32 directories are limited with how many files it can hold.


exFAT was first released with CE 6.0 but will finally hit the mainstream with Vista SP1. exFAT has several advantages over FAT32:

    -File size limit is now 16 exabytes.

    - Format size limits and files per directory limits are practically eliminated.

    - Like HPFS, exFAT uses free space bitmaps to reduce fragmentation and free space allocation/detection issues.

    - Like HTFS, permission systems should be able to be attached through an access control list (ACL). It is unclear if or when Vista will include this feature, however.

    In the past most power-users of Microsoft systems have opted to format/convert to a NTFS file system instead.


Interestingly enough, exFAT is not used currently for formatting hard drives. It is being recommended in Flash memory storage and other external devices only. This is why it is currently not considered a huge competitor to NTFS on hard drives.

However, exFAT should be a true competitor to NTFS on systems with limited processing power and memory. NTFS on flash memory has been known to be inefficient for quite some time. exFAT’s smaller footprint/overhead makes it ideal for this purpose. Of course, only if your definition of “ideal” allows software to be proprietary and not open source.

Vista will happily read FAT, exFAT, and NTFS from flash. ReadyBoost may not work with exFAT formatted flash drives, however.

In conclusion, basically, FAT is a simple system. This limits FAT system by losing efficiency at large sizes, but allows it to run with less resources. The complexity of NTFS increases features but requires more memory and processing power.

Previous recipe | Next recipe |
 
  • sheena
    if i format my external hdd to exfat 32 kilobytes-to back up my ps3; can re-format it back to NFTS back up my computer? will this cause any problems if i back up my pc with a formated external hdd of exfat 32 kilobytes??

    thanks!
  • Amnuay M.
    I think the main problem for me is exFAT is not supported in XP....
  • Tracy
    exFAT is supported in XP sp3
  • Captain Meatshield
    But only by hunting down and downloading an update.
  • morten
    and ps3 users can`t use exFat
  • What I really want from Microsoft is support for the major filesystems other operating systems use. Cheifly I am concerned with ext2/3, UFS, and HFS+. As it stands, Windows just does not work very well in a multi-OS environment. OS X can read FreeBSD filesystems. FreeBSD has no trouble reading Linux stuff. Linux can read Mac stuff. They all know how to read data from the other systems. Windows is the only one that doesn't.

    All the other systems can read Windows stuff too, and even write FAT32 (write support for NTFS is theoretically available but not very robust last I checked). Nonetheless, at least the other systems can *read* NTFS. But can Windows read stuff from other systems? No.

    So instead of doing that, they go and invent a whole *new* filesystem, with no significant features that aren't in at least one of the existing filesystems. Okay, yeah, so there are a handful of special situations where exFAT is a better compromise than FAT32 or NTFS. But on the whole it's just that -- a compromise between those two existing choices, not really better than either of them in the general case. Meh.

    If they were going to develop a *new* filesystem, why not give it some *new* capabilities, like inodes to abstract the stored files away from their directory entries so that we don't have to reboot all the time for minor updates? How about automatic versioning, like VMS has had since Bill Gates was working out of a garage? Now *that* would be useful.
  • hawkybentley75
    You are right in what you say with regard to Windows not being able to read from or write to HFS+. But free software is available for ext2/3 (LINUX) partitions from the following site: www.fs-driver.org. As with most stuff related to Linux it is free. I have been using it myself for several years now (dual-boot windows and Linux system). I'm not sure whether it will read across networks but it does the job fine locally.
  • z0iid
    OS X doesn't read NTFS....
  • z0iid
    well, supposedly it does, but my girlfriends macbook won't read my external hd that is ntfs formatted. i have to copy stuff to a usb key that uses FAT.
  • Tracy
    The exFAT file system is also supported in XP sp3 I believe


    http://windowsitpro.com/article/articleid/98986...
  • paolo
    what is exNTFS? what is the best format for vista 64bit?
  • luquien
    No such thing. It's exFAT or NTFS. For the Vista operating system drive, stick with NTFS (not sure Vista will even install on exFAT due to lack of security)

    One place I can see exFAT coming in handily is on a cache drive for a Windows Media Service Server or IIS7 box where no security, high speed, and almost unlimited number of files, comes in great.
  • A Known Mouse
    Windows 7 allows readyboost from exFAT, bigger readyboost :D
  • bye
    ey bro peace i no tk server bye lol
  • Ricardo
    Awesome! I had a 120gb pen drive and converted to ntfs and it stopped working, I'm using the the exfat and had no problem in Vista SP! and in XP I downloaded a file driver and I can use it in XP. No problem. Thanks to this I can use my 120gb pen drive.

    How did they format a 120gb pen drive I don't know and it read FAT file system. So I converted it to NTFS and did could not format complete, NOW exFAT I have no porblem.
  • Fred
    "- Like HPFS,...
    - Like HTFS,... "

    What are HPFS and HTFS?
  • scoffer
    Not sure if this is directly related to the Vs topic here, but it is the closest I can find so far.

    exFAT is a bit odd. I have a 16GB Flash drive. I converted it to 16GB exFAT via Win7. When I tried to copy files (about 4 GB total), I had an error saying that I needed another 300MB, but, the disk had 15.7GB free space. So I converted it to 8GB exFAT.

    The Flash Drive will not format to NTFS in XP, Vista nor Win7, and FAT32 is useless.

    Can anyone please explain how to make my 15.7GB Flash Drive save a single 15.7GB file using exFAT?

    Thank you
  • Myrddin
    After formatting you're not going to have as much space free, no matter which format you use so, you're probably not going to get that file onto that flash drive if those are your two sizes.
blog comments powered by Disqus