Using ExFAT on Mac OSX

tomo — Mon, 07 Mar 2016 14:23:16 +0000

March 7, 2016

ExFAT is an updated version of FAT (Microsoft DOS's original File Allocation Table) meant for use across platforms (not only PCs) and on external drives. Don't confuse exFAT with EXtFS. ExFAT is still a Microsoft product, meaning companies (hardware companies, like memory card manufacturers, who want to use exFAT on their disks/drives) need to pay a licensing fee to Microsoft. It is not open source. ExFAT is the file system I recommend for external USB disks.

Fortunately...

Use an external USB drive across Windows and Mac OSX: exFAT, NTFS, HFS+

tomo — Sat, 26 Dec 2015 11:56:00 +0000

December 26, 2015

exfat

Since the beginning of time, Macs and PCs (IBM-compatible / Intel-chip / Microsoft DOS or Windows OS) used the same or similar hardware, including for external storage, but had differences in software which made sharing of hardware between them incompatible. Even as each operating system (from Mac OS up to OSX, DOS to Windows 3.1 to Windows NT) upgraded and used new disk formats, they remained different and incompatible. Other OSs like Linux and the BSDs had their own quirks, although they also sought to be able to work with DOS disks from the beginning, and can mount disks from other...