Microsoft's only gone and published the exFAT spec, now supports popping it in the Linux kernel

The Register ^ | Aug 28, 2019 | Tim Anderson

[dayglored]

>> Does anyone know if NTFS does anything that EXT4 doesn't do?

> NTFS can compress files, can do deduplication, EXT4 can’t do snapshots (natively). Honestly, they are very similar- EXT4 of course has things I wish Microsoft would do like allow file names of any character.

EXT4, like most native Unix/Linux filesystems, is based on a fixed-at-format-time pool of "inodes", with one inode required for each directory and each file. So if you allocate, say, 1M inodes when you format the volume (mkfs), and you try to put more than 1M files and directories on it, you lose. (Actually more than 95% -- generally 5% are reserved.)

NTFS is expandable in that regard -- there's no enforced upper limit on the number of directories and files in a volume, other than the volume's capacity.

NTFS has many of the more advanced, esoteric capabilities of EXT4, but most of them are blocked in Windows usage because "they would confuse users". Like for example symbolic links (no, Windows shortcuts are not true symlinks). NTFS is much better than Windows lets it be.

I think the reason NTFS in Windows disallows a bunch of punctuation characters in filenames is back-compatibility with MS-DOS. I'm not sure whether that prohibition is inherent in NTFS, or whether it's another artifact of Windows usage; I suspect the latter.

[Svartalfiar]

But what would that be? The advanced filesystems like ext4, NTFS, APFS (and HPFS+), nevermind ReiserFS and others, are all far too different in complex ways for use as a portable filesystem. I deal with filesystem incompabilities every day.

Heck, even something relatively simple like configuring a common network drive, used by Windows, Mac, and Linux users, to both export over NFS and share over CIFS/SMB3.,x causes enough hiccups.

Yup. exFAT is the only drive formatting that works well for thumb drives and SD Cards.
FAT and FAT32 can't handle big files. NTFS can have allocation issues, permission issues, and isn't fully compatible with Mac (new Mac maybe?). Obviously any Mac formatting is useless, as regular computers generally can't read or write to them. Same with ext2/3/4 and other Linux formats - Windows and Mac don't like 'em. And of course any proprietary formats from Sony or Panasonic or whomever, definitely aren't good options unless your camera requires it.

That leaves exFAT as the main one that works best between Windows and Mac, some Linux; and hopefully with this news, all Linux here soon!

[daniel1212]

Same with ext2/3/4 and other Linux formats - Windows and Mac don't like 'em

Linux Reader for Windows from DiskInternals enables read-only access of Ext2/Ext3/Ext4, HFS and ReiserFS files in Windows. However, in another example of corrupt moral "coding," its license agreement states,

display or distribution of this SOFTWARE together with material that is racist...abusive, promoting hatred,discriminating or displaying prejudice based on religion, ethnic heritage, race sexual orientation or age is strictly prohibited.

However, there is http://sourceforge.net/projects/ext2read/