iMac's Mac OS X Snow Leopard supports ExFAT

By .Neo
in Apple (macOS)

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Grand Master

PyX

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You dont have the kext. Only the latest iMac's shipped with the kext. 10.6.5 will ship with the kext.

Oh, I see.

But that?s pretty strange that there?s two versions of 10.6.4 in the wild ... I thought Apple would be the type of company to say "let?s simply things, let?s just release it alone or along with 10.6.5 when it?s done or 10.6.5 right away".

I don?t think this format is going to change my world though, for now, but it?s good to see Apple rolling out the driver to support it.

It?d be nicer to see a new file system in the next iteration of OS X. Really small files are really killing my iMac :p I?m currently developing a website and last time I moved it into a new directory, it took like 2 minutes and it?s just 10MB lol.

Grand Master

PyX

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Small files are automatically defragmented by Mac OS X.

Yes. You can format every drive as exFAT.

Yeah, forgot about the automatic defragmentation. I guess this explains it, but I’ve read back in the time of the upcoming of ZFS that HFS+ wasn’t good with smaller files.

Every drive? Even my main HD where OS X is stored? :p

I never really understood why Apple and Microsoft couldn't ally and make one unique File System to beat them all. Or maybe the International Standards Organization should make one and obligate people to use it, but I guess it doesn't work like that in real life.

This whole thing is bothering me because it's a pure technicality, it should be transparent to the user.

Grand Master

.Neo

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But I believe it’s not a good idea to install OS X in that... or the installation process will simply reformat it under HFS+...

You can't install Mac OS X on a non-HFS+ drive. That doesn't change the fact though that technically there's nothing preventing you from formatting your Macintosh HD or any other internal drive you might have as exFAT.

Recap: Disk Utility allows you to format any drive as exFAT. It isn't limited to SDHC cards only.

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rawr_boy81

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Yeah, forgot about the automatic defragmentation. I guess this explains it, but I?ve read back in the time of the upcoming of ZFS that HFS+ wasn?t good with smaller files.

ZFS main problem is that it requires at least a 64bit CPU along with minimum 4GB of memory or otherwise the whole experience is very painful to say the least.

I never really understood why Apple and Microsoft couldn't ally and make one unique File System to beat them all. Or maybe the International Standards Organization should make one and obligate people to use it, but I guess it doesn't work like that in real life. This whole thing is bothering me because it's a pure technicality, it should be transparent to the user.

I can understand having operating system specific file systems given the value added perspective of integration between the OS and the underlying file system in the internal hard disk but there is no reason why there can't be a patent and royalty free file system to make life easier when transferring files between different machines.

Grand Master

The_Decryptor Veteran

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All of the major operating systems support installing pluggable file systems, so making up a brand new file system and having R/W support under Linux/Windows/OS X isn't very hard. Of course, it's never perfect, Windows only supports auto-mounting if the filesystem is a built in type, installed filesystems need to be manually mounted and given a drive letter.

I used to use EXT3 on my external hard drive when I was dual booting Linux and Windows. To do it properly I had to edit the file system header to report itself as NTFS so Windows would do something with it, while Linux just ignored the type and mounted it properly.

Grand Master

Xtreme $niper

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All of the major operating systems support installing pluggable file systems, so making up a brand new file system and having R/W support under Linux/Windows/OS X isn't very hard. Of course, it's never perfect, Windows only supports auto-mounting if the filesystem is a built in type, installed filesystems need to be manually mounted and given a drive letter.

I used to use EXT3 on my external hard drive when I was dual booting Linux and Windows. To do it properly I had to edit the file system header to report itself as NTFS so Windows would do something with it, while Linux just ignored the type and mounted it properly.

Would that kind of spoofing work for a scenario like plugging a USB flash drive into a PS3? It would be handy to get the PS3 to be able to read different file systems rather than just FAT32, so if I just tried to get it to tell the PS3 it's FAT32, would that be sufficient? I guess the real question is, when you report a EXT3 drive to Windows as an NTFS does it mount it and read/write to it as if it's NTFS? Because if the PS3 is incapable of reading/writing to anything but FAT32, then simply spoofing probably wouldn't be enough... :(

Grand Master

Elliott

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Would that kind of spoofing work for a scenario like plugging a USB flash drive into a PS3? It would be handy to get the PS3 to be able to read different file systems rather than just FAT32, so if I just tried to get it to tell the PS3 it's FAT32, would that be sufficient? I guess the real question is, when you report a EXT3 drive to Windows as an NTFS does it mount it and read/write to it as if it's NTFS? Because if the PS3 is incapable of reading/writing to anything but FAT32, then simply spoofing probably wouldn't be enough... :(

It wouldn't be enough. He merely spoofed Windows into thinking it was NTFS so the drive would auto-mount. He still had to install EXT3 extensions onto the system for Windows to be able to read the EXT3 filesystem.

Grand Master

.Neo

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Would that kind of spoofing work for a scenario like plugging a USB flash drive into a PS3? It would be handy to get the PS3 to be able to read different file systems rather than just FAT32, so if I just tried to get it to tell the PS3 it's FAT32, would that be sufficient? I guess the real question is, when you report a EXT3 drive to Windows as an NTFS does it mount it and read/write to it as if it's NTFS? Because if the PS3 is incapable of reading/writing to anything but FAT32, then simply spoofing probably wouldn't be enough... :(

Something like that only works because the actual extension for the EXT3 filesystem is there. So unless you would find a way to add exFAT (or whatever) support to the PS3's firmware it wouldn't work.

Edit Elliott beat me to it.

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