exFAT or NTFS

[Skulltrail]

I have a 320GB Toshiba external hard drive I bought from Dell.com for $40. It's a great storage device. Speeds are fast, and capacity is more than needed. But I can't use it on my Xbox 360 due to the file system being NTFS (Xbox 360 only supports FAT).

I understand exFAT is essentially FAT32 but on steroids (larger file size limits, few more features) but is it inferior to NTFS? I'm thinking about formatting it to exFAT so that I can watch and play the media I have on it via Xbox 360. Is NTFS faster in terms of file transfer speed, access time, in anyway?

I read a few websites and came to the lacking conclusion that NTFS is great for primary hard drives (those with operating systems on them) and that exFAT is best for flash drives and "other external devices" (not sure if the is a recommendation for external hard drives).

What's your take on this? Feel free to insert your 5 cents about the matter. :D

[nullie]

exFAT and FAT32 aren't compatible with each other and Xbox 360 doesn't support exFAT at all. Your hard drive manufacture probably has utilities to format large FAT32 drives (Windows will only format drivers upto 32GB), if not there's plenty to choose from. Here's the first result from Google: http://serverfault.com/questions/52640/how-to-format-as-fat32-from-windows-7-vista

[+ir0nw0lf Subscriber²]

According to multiple websites/wikis: the Xbox 360 does not support reading drives formatted with NTFS or exFAT, so your idea of going to exFAT is out unfortunately. Keep in mind also that on FAT32, 4 GB is the largest file size, so you might have to split up large movies and such.

[goretsky Supervisor]

Hello,

Have you considered creating a "small" FAT32 disk volume of, say, 32GB or so, for copying media files over to for playing on your video game console, and formatting the remaining portion of the disk with the NTFS file system?

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

[DigitalE]

How about just connecting the external drive to your computer and stream media over your network? That way you could format the external drive however you want.

[Darconf]

I converted an entire 250gb external drive to fat32 for my ps3 with my PC ,,,, works great. I cant remember the program i used to do it anymore, maybe someone else knows what it is.

edit; found the info here link hope this helps :cool:

[Brandon H Supervisor]

i second DigitalE's idea

[Azusa]

somewhat on topic but exFAT can take file sizes over 4GB right?

[farmeunit]

I converted an entire 250gb external drive to fat32 for my ps3 with my PC ,,,, works great. I cant remember the program i used to do it anymore, maybe someone else knows what it is.

You can do that without a special program. You're just limited by the file size you can store on it. It's not a problem for "most" files generally, but HD video or anything over 4GB in a single file wouldn't work.

I would recommend streaming over the network to your 360 also. I actually like my regular Xbox with XBMC better when it comes to streaming media, but of course you can't do HD material.

[rshullic]

For more information there is a technical paper in the SANS reading room at: http://www.sans.org/reading_room/whitepapers/forensics/reverse-engineering-microsoft-exfat-file-system_33274

and there is a blog at http://rshullic.wordpress.com

There has been a lot of inaccurate information posted on exFAT, even Microsoft can't publish the proper detals, as they (Microsoft) published bad information in the KB for the Windows XP/Server 2003 patch to add exFAT support to those systems.

So, first, let's talk about file size: Microsoft incorrectly published the maximum file size as 64ZiB, and as a result the Wikipedia and other websites followed along. The truth is. the maxium file size, as in NTFS, is 16EiB because the file size, i.e. the number of bytes in a file, is stored in a 64 bit number. However, since the file system can never be larger than 128PiB, which is smaller than 16EiB, you will never reach the theoretical maximum anyway. However, this is larger than then the 4GB limit of FAT32.

Suitability: exFAT was designed for removale media. NTFS is not suitable for removalable media, especially since NTFS uses a lazy write, which means that data and control blocks are bufferend into memory, and an abrupt disengage of the media could result in data loss. Today, USB media does come to mind, but between the SD card association and Sony with the Memory stick, they have adopted exFAT as the exclusive file system of SDXC and XC memory stick media, which is used in cameras, cell phones, GPS, etc and between SD and Sony, that is 90% of the markey. However, each camera manufacturer has to pay Microsoft like $300K each for the license to the specifications. But almost anything can be formatted in exFAT (excpet floppies) and USB is not the only removalable media out there.

Compatibility: exFAT is right now restricted to the Desktop/Server platforms of Windows XP (SP2 & SP3 with a patch), Vista (SP1 and above), and WIndows 7 (RTM). There is not Linux, MAC, or other OS support right now. All consumer devices, except Windows CE and the camera companies that licensed the specification, can NOT support exFAT. (There is actually a TV manufacturer that also licensed exFAT). This means that PS2, PS3, XBOX, probably most Blu-Ray Players, cell phones, etc don't have exFAT support. even devices that have SDXC imbedded card readers can't support exFAT unless the OS installed on those devices can read/write exFAT.

Speed: NTFS is not necessarily faster than exFAT since NTFS has a lot of overhead. . NTFS is faster than FAT12/FAT16/FAT32 because NTFS has the free space allocation map, but exFAT now has the bitmp as well. Also, in exFAT - the FAT itself is no longer used unless there is file fragmentation, i.e. the file can't be written as one set of contigious blocks. This also reduced a lot of overhead because the FAT was a set of controls blocks that required a lot of I/O. One of the problems with FAT16 and FAT32, when used in cameras was finding available free blocks. The fle system overhead slowed down write operations. When you look at the future SD4.0 card specification, it calls for a bus speed for i/o transfer of up to 300MBps (that is 2.4 gigabits/second). We are currently at SD3.0 with a maximum bus speed of 104MBps, and the SDXC memory cards are currently being toted as class 10 but claim a 30MBps speed and cost $400 and above. Since these cards are all new, it is going to take a few years to get a reasonable prive point. But a 48GB SDXC card is the equivalent memory space of a dual layer Blu-Ray disc, and can be re-written.

NTFS/exFAT: exFAT calls for file permissions and fault tollerance (which I believe the Windows CE version has), but is not in the current exFAT 1.00 specification. So, it is possible that exFAT wil get a lot more NTFS features. But today, exFAT has one (1) FAT where FAT16/FAT32 have 2, so exFAT actually has less fault tollerance on the desktop today than its predecessors.

Micorosft never supported creation of a FAT32 file system larger than 32GB, but it will support a FAT32 system formatted for larger than 32GB, although some utilities won't work correctly, such as some setup utilities.

[Corris Veteran]

Text overload, lol.

Simple answer, the Xbox 360 can't read exFat or NTFS, it can do Fat32.

If you want it to read everything on the external hard drive format it to Fat32, get a pen drive or something alike that can be used to move media over or stream content through your network.

[NightSt@lk3r]

I formatted my 500GB External harddrive to HFS+ for use on my 360, it has no filesize limits unlike FAT32.

[nullie]

Text overload, lol.

He goes in detail about exFAT, and he's right it has a lot of issues and I think it's great to see some more detailed analyst about the problems it has and people bringing awareness about it. He registered just to post about it...

[DigitalE]

I formatted my 500GB External harddrive to HFS+ for use on my 360, it has no filesize limits unlike FAT32.

Unfortunately you'd need something like MacDrive if you want to be able to access the disk in Windows.

[rshullic]

He goes in detail about exFAT, and he's right it has a lot of issues and I think it's great to see some more detailed analyst about the problems it has and people bringing awareness about it. He registered just to post about it...

It is true, the only and primary reason that I registered was to respond to the exFAT issue, and yes, definitely brain overload. exFAT is relatively new, and as a topic is creeping up as a very common issue of the "exfat v. NTFS" and/or "exfat v. FAT32" issue/question. There is little information out there, and Microsoft has not officailly released the specification or details of the internals and the use is licensed. This makes the exFAT topic a hot topic on Linux, Mac/Apple and Gaming (PS2, PS3, XBOX) forums. The questions out there are either which one to use, or how to convert from one to the other.

I am just trying to get the word out and help speard the word some that everyone understands the complications and also to try to make sure the information is accurate.

[asusmc]

It is true, the only and primary reason that I registered was to respond to the exFAT issue, and yes, definitely brain overload. exFAT is relatively new, and as a topic is creeping up as a very common issue of the "exfat v. NTFS" and/or "exfat v. FAT32" issue/question. There is little information out there, and Microsoft has not officailly released the specification or details of the internals and the use is licensed. This makes the exFAT topic a hot topic on Linux, Mac/Apple and Gaming (PS2, PS3, XBOX) forums. The questions out there are either which one to use, or how to convert from one to the other.

I am just trying to get the word out and help speard the word some that everyone understands the complications and also to try to make sure the information is accurate.

Thank you for explaining but the main question is, where is your source?