iMac's Mac OS X Snow Leopard supports ExFAT

By .Neo
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Grand Master

.Neo

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I just found something interesting: ExFAT support in Mac OS X Snow Leopard v10.6.4 (build 10F2090)

screenshot20100930at172.png

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Notice how the extension dates from July 17th, 2010, while Mac OS X v10.6.4 was released June 15th.

Some people confirmed they don't have it on their older Macs even with Mac OS X Snow Leopard v10.6.4 installed. Apparently this is currently unique to the iMac (mid 2010) and perhaps other 2010 Macs.

screenshot20101001at135.png

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Grand Master

Xtreme $niper

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Hmm, interesting. I'm increasingly getting ****ed off with flash drives being formatted as FAT32 because I cannot transport files greater than 4GB without splitting them. The sooner this becomes widely used, the better.

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Grand Master

Rudy

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I just found something interesting: ExFAT support in Mac OS X Snow Leopard v10.6.4 (build 10F2090)

Notice how the extension dates from July 17th, 2010, while Mac OS X v10.6.4 was released June 15th.

Some people confirmed they don't have it on their older Macs even with Mac OS X Snow Leopard v10.6.4 installed. Apparently this is currently unique to the iMac (mid 2010) and perhaps other 2010 Macs.

The funny thing is that I noticed that yesterday when I was formatting my usb drive :woot: but I thought it just came with 10.6.4....I guess everyone else will get it with 10.6.5

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jwoodfin09

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Major differences between exFAT and FAT32?

exFAT (Extended

File Allocation Table), (also sometimes referred to as FAT64) is a proprietary, patent-pending[2] file system suited especially for USB flash drives,[citation needed]

introduced by Microsoft for embedded devices in Windows Embedded CE

6.0, in their desktop operating systems Windows Vista Service Pack 1[3]

and Windows 7, and in their server operating system Windows Server 2008.[4] exFAT can be

used where the NTFS file system is not a feasible solution, due

to data structure overhead, or where the file size or directory restrictions of

previous versions of the FAT file

system are unacceptable. Windows XP and Windows Server 2003

(both x86 and x64) users can add support for exFAT by installing an update from

Microsoft.[1] An experimental, open source Linux

kernel module that supports the reading of exFAT files is currently under

development.[5] A FUSE-based

full-featured implementation is currently in beta status.[6]

A proprietary, read/write solution, licensed and derived from the Microsoft

exFAT implementation, is available for Android, Linux and other operating

systems from Tuxera.[7]

A proprietary, full-featured implementation?XCFiles?is available from Datalight.[8]

A third party open source driver is available for DOS.[9]

The advantages over previous File Allocation Table (FAT) file system versions include:

  • Scalability to large disk sizes: 64 ZiB[10] theoretical max, 512 TiB recommended max, raised from the 2 TiB limit of FAT32 partitions. Note that the built-in Windows XP format utility limits new FAT32 partitions to 32 GiB.[1]
  • Cluster size up to 32 MiB[1]
  • Subdirectory size up to 256 MiB[1]
  • File size limit of 16 EiB[11] (Limited by volume size), raised from close to 4 GiB in FAT32[1]
  • Free space allocation and delete performance improved due to introduction of a free space bitmap
  • Support for up to 2,796,202 files per subdirectory[2] [12], increased from 65,536
  • Support for access control lists (not supported yet in Windows Vista SP1)[13]
  • Support for TFAT, a transactional file system standard (optionally WinCE activated function)
  • Provision for OEM-definable parameters to customize the file system for specific device characteristics
  • Support for UTC timestamps (starting with Vista SP2)[14]
  • Timestamp granularity of 10 ms (better than previous FAT versions' 2 s, but worse than NTFS's 100 ns)[2]

The disadvantages compared to previous FAT versions include:

  • Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 users must have Service Pack 2 or later and install an update to support exFAT
  • Windows Vista must be Service Pack 1 or later for exFAT support
  • Devices formatted using exFAT cannot be read by any version of Windows prior to Windows XP or by any version of DOS or OS/2 (unless emulated as otherwise).
  • Devices using exFAT are unable to use Windows Vista's ReadyBoost capability (Windows 7 adds support for ReadyBoost on exFAT formatted drives and enables a larger ReadyBoost cache due to the removal of the 4GB file size limit of FAT32)[15]
  • Microsoft has not released the official exFAT file specification, and a license from Microsoft is required in order to make and distribute exFAT implementations[16]
  • Limited or no support outside PC environment at present ? most current consumer electronics, such as televisions and A/V receivers, can only handle previous FAT versions (this may change with the new SDXC cards and Memory Stick XC requiring exFAT)
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Grand Master

+virtorio MVC

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Awesome, shame I cannot use EXT4 on my iMac, I'm not a big fan of HFS+ seams to get filesystem corruption every other week.

Thanks Guys.

Then something on your machine isn't working right.

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Grand Master

.Neo

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Really?

Then something on your machine isn't working right.

You know I actually had something like that happing to my Mac Pro. Every other week Disk Utility would throw out a whole list of red errors when checking my internal HDD. Fixing it would get rid of the errors but after so many restarts they would just randomly appear again. As a response I threw about every disk checking utility at the HDD and not a single bad sector/error was found by any of them. Everything worked as expected (performance wise), the OS didn't give any errors etc. Only repairing permissions would take longer. Occasionally Spotlight would screw up but then fix itself. Formatting the drive and reinstalling Mac OS X would solve nothing. I even tried multiple Mac OS X Install DVDs just to be sure that wasn't it either. I had a professional check my HDD and he couldn't find any hardware related issues either. I'm pretty sure the problem didn't exist when my 2009 Mac Pro still ran Mac OS X Leopard.

To this very day I still don't know what was wrong. You guys tell me.

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Grand Master

+virtorio MVC

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  • MVC
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You know I actually had something like that happing to my Mac Pro. Every other week Disk Utility would throw out a whole list of red errors when checking my internal HDD. Fixing it would get rid of the errors but after so many restarts they would just randomly appear again. As a response I threw about every disk checking utility at the HDD and not a single bad sector/error was found by any of them. Everything worked as expected (performance wise), the OS didn't give any errors etc. Only repairing permissions would take longer. Occasionally Spotlight would screw up but then fix itself. Formatting the drive and reinstalling Mac OS X would solve nothing. I even tried multiple Mac OS X Install DVDs just to be sure that wasn't it either. I had a professional check my HDD and he couldn't find any hardware related issues either. I'm pretty sure the problem didn't exist when my 2009 Mac Pro still ran Mac OS X Leopard.

To this very day I still don't know what was wrong. You guys tell me.

Has to be some kind of defect or compatibility issue with the drive or other piece of hardware. I had an issue with an external drive a little similar to this, where the drive would not mount all the time and the Time Machine backup operating would sometimes fail. None of the scanning tools detected any problem and it eventually stopped working.

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Grand Master

.Neo

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These were the errors for interest sake:

Verifying volume “Macintosh HD” Performing live verification. Checking Journaled HFS Plus volume. Checking extents overflow file. Checking catalog file. Missing thread record (id = 856973) Incorrect number of thread records Checking multi-linked files. Checking catalog hierarchy. Invalid volume directory count (It should be 146552 instead of 146553) Checking extended attributes file. Checking volume bitmap. Checking volume information. The volume Macintosh HD was found corrupt and needs to be repaired. Error: This disk needs to be repaired. Start up your computer with another disk (such as your Mac OS X installation disc), and then use Disk Utility to repair this disk.

Apple claimed nothing was wrong with the hardware.

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Grand Master

Xtreme $niper

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At that point, I would have bought a new drive, cloned the contents of it to the new drive (if possible), swapped them out, and used the old "problematic" drive as an external.

It would be risky, because I'd be assuming the issue is with the HDD, but if it worked it would pay off.

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Guest

Posted
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These were the errors for interest sake:

Verifying volume “Macintosh HD” Performing live verification. Checking Journaled HFS Plus volume. Checking extents overflow file. Checking catalog file. Missing thread record (id = 856973) Incorrect number of thread records Checking multi-linked files. Checking catalog hierarchy. Invalid volume directory count (It should be 146552 instead of 146553) Checking extended attributes file. Checking volume bitmap. Checking volume information. The volume Macintosh HD was found corrupt and needs to be repaired. Error: This disk needs to be repaired. Start up your computer with another disk (such as your Mac OS X installation disc), and then use Disk Utility to repair this disk.

Apple claimed nothing was wrong with the hardware.

I'm having the exact same problem with my October 2009 MacBook Pro. Has been happening since I bought, after a couple of reboots it would randomly come back with that error. This was with the stock hard drive and a new one I put in it. Apple checked it and they couldn't find anything wrong. :blink: I don't know where I stand really atm. All the Apple Genius bar staff was interested in was that Disk Utility fixed it. (I've also reformatted so much that I've lost count).

When you say Spotlight was messing up, did it try and rebuild the index every so often? That's what happens to mine.

Also, this error sometimes appears until I repair the drive:

post-81815-12859203233406.png

There must be a piece of hardware that is conflicting, don't think I will find out though.

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Grand Master

The_Decryptor Veteran

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exFAT support? Cool.

I've been slowly transitioning my flash drives over to using exFAT, but every so often I seem to end up on an old XP system or such, so I've resorted to bringing the patches along with me and upgrading the system when nobody's looking.

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Grand Master

.Neo

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Is this really unique to the 27-inch iMac (mid 2010)? I still have my second 27-inch iMac standing in a box waiting to be picked up by TNT and that one has exFAT support as well. Rudy confirmed it as well on his Core i5 27-inch iMac (mid 2010). Someone on another forum claims his 21,5-inch iMac (also mid 2010) does in fact not have exFAT support.

Isn't that weird? :/

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Grand Master

Elliott

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Is this really unique to the 27-inch iMac (mid 2010)? I still have my second 27-inch iMac standing in a box waiting to be picked up by TNT and that one has exFAT support as well. Rudy confirmed it as well on his Core i5 27-inch iMac (mid 2010). Someone on another forum claims his 21,5-inch iMac (also mid 2010) does in fact not have exFAT support.

Isn't that weird? :/

It seems like the recently shipping 27" iMacs have a slightly newer version of 10.6.4 on them (maybe to include some newer drivers). ExFAT support could've just slipped in with that.

Like I've said though: it is coming to 10.6.5 (presumably to all Macs).

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Grand Master

The_Decryptor Veteran

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Yeah, it would be unique to the iMac, that's the only Mac currently with SD card support (I think)

It seems silly for Apple to only include exFAT support to those Macs, it's not limited to SDXC cards.

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Grand Master

.Neo

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Yeah, it would be unique to the iMac, that's the only Mac currently with SD card support (I think)

It seems silly for Apple to only include exFAT support to those Macs, it's not limited to SDXC cards.

At this point is seems as if it's unique to the 27-inch iMac as some 21,5-inch iMac owners have claimed on another forum that they don't have it. Also you can format any drive as exFAT. Be it a SDHD card, USB-key, internal or external HDD.

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Grand Master

Jason S. Global Moderator

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  • Global Moderator
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exFAT support? Cool.

I've been slowly transitioning my flash drives over to using exFAT, but every so often I seem to end up on an old XP system or such, so I've resorted to bringing the patches along with me and upgrading the system when nobody's looking.

ive been doing the same - trying to use exFAT as much as i can now. nice to see it can interface w/ OSX too :cool:

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