An exFAT experiment in Vista SP1

[iwod]

I wish ExFAT were included in Xp SP3

[frogger]

So why not use it on a hard-drive?

Just because it was optimized for flash devices doesn't mean it won't do just as good on hard drives, does it?

[zivan56]

Hard drives have a spinning disk, which have access time and seek time dependant on which track/sector the drive head is at. So filesystem used for such drives have to be optimized to write and read as fast as possible (i.e use elevator algorithm). Flash drives have the same access time for any location of the device, but have issues like the fact that every location on the drive can only be written to a fixed number of times before it becomes unusable.

FYI, wear leveling is actually implemented in most modern flash memory controllers, and probably why it is not part of this filesystem.

[omicronkappa278]

Apparently not, but I have heard of people getting the exFAT drivers from Vista to work on XP. Not sure how they do it yet.

No problem...

Go onto a Vista SP1 PC and find the following files:

exfat.sys

uexfat.dll

Copy exfat.sys C:\Windows\System32\Drivers Folder

Copy uexfat.dll C:\Windows\System32

Copy the Following text to notepad and save it as: "uexfat.reg"

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\exfat]
"Description"="exFAT File System Driver"
"DisplayName"="exFAT File System Driver"
"ErrorControl"=dword:00000001
"Group"="Boot File System"
"Start"=dword:00000002
"Type"=dword:00000002

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Eventlog\System\exfat]
"EventMessageFile"=hex(2):25,00,53,00,79,00,73,00,74,00,65,00,6d,00,52,00,6f,\
00,6f,00,74,00,25,00,5c,00,53,00,79,00,73,00,74,00,65,00,6d,00,33,00,32,00,\
5c,00,49,00,6f,00,4c,00,6f,00,67,00,4d,00,73,00,67,00,2e,00,64,00,6c,00,6c,\
00,00,00
"TypesSupported"=dword:00000007

Double-Click the REG file and accept importing into the Registry... Reboot... Your XP or Server 2003 Machine can read/write exFAT now... It just cannot format a new exFAT drive as exFAT... If your drive is already exFAT, this works very well.

[JM Productions]

MicroSoft has released a Patch for XP SP3 to support exFat.

Update for Windows XP (KB955704)

this enables WinXP to read/Write & FORMAT drives using exFat

[BoDEAN]

Thanks for the heads up. My guess is that maybe 2% of the Vista/XP world use this file system. Seems like NTFS is more main stream.

[Tha Bloo Monkee]

I've never heard of ExFat till now. Seems interesting. However, due to compatibility I'll be sticking with FAT32 for my flash media for some time. That patch for Windows XP to support it will definitely help push it though. But say for example, I want to read something on a PS3? No luck there (I'm assuming).

But of course any new format needs time to take off.

[Scrinner]

After reading this thread, it's been agreed upon that exfat is primarily for flash drives as it is marketed for that but it is also agreed it is inferior to ntfs. So what can we derive as the conclusion from this? I ask this as i'm getting a massive usb drive soon and all computers it'll be in use with will have exFat support with the exception of a single XP system. I'm not trying to derail the topic mind you but it is getting confusing :)

[soldier1st]

Well if you ask me any Flash Drive over 4GB should be either NTFS or exfat if your going to store a single file that is 4GB or larger as it makes no sense to use exfat or NTFS on say a 1GB flash drive as your not able to take advantage of NTFS or exfat's 4GB single file capabilities but if you don't plan to store a single file of 4GB or larger on a 4GB+ flash drive then by all means stick to what works for you.

[ToneKnee]

Would be nice to see some ExFAT benchmarks.

[erpster3]

MicroSoft has released a Patch for XP SP3 to support exFat.

Update for Windows XP (KB955704)

this enables WinXP to read/Write & FORMAT drives using exFat

This KB955704 update is for 32bit editions of Windows XP only. Microsoft has not yet made an update like this for 64bit editions of Windows XP and all editions of Windows Server 2003.

also when formatting exfat volumes, you must do so in Windows Explorer or the format.com command line tool. You can't format exfat volumes from XP's Disk Management feature as the exFAT format option is not there (unless MS offers a separate update for Disk Management that can fully recognize exFAT volumes).

Edited February 19, 2009 by erpster3

[hoak]

An interesting discussion; the advantage to using exFAT over NTFS is lower resource (RAM, HD I/O, and CPU) utilization, and substantially less disk space is wasted...

For Tweak Freaks that are looking to get every iota of performance out of say their game rigs some advantage might be had from using exFAT, but it would have to be the only FS in use/installed because when NTFS is installed so to is all its resource pork.

While Windows CE will install and boot from exFAT on a hard disk, I don't know if there's any way create an installable primary bootable partition that would support and let you install Windows XP, 2003, Vista, or 7... Anyone have any idea how that might be achieved?

:blink:

Edited April 1, 2009 by hoak

[RvXtm]

I use exfat on my win pc , but the only problem is that i cant do a thing with the exfat formated flash on a mac...