Why yes, I would in fact like to write a file bigger than 4GB in 2025. Com'on flash drive manufacturers, get your shit together and format in exFAT already -_-
Compatibility.
exFAT is fully compatible with all modern OSs and any device running a somewhat modern Linux kernel
The keyword here is "modern". Some people use older hardware, like DVRs with ancient firmwares.
Most people, nowadays, use cloud services instead of USB sticks, so I guess it's preferred to focus on supporting legacy devices.
The real problem may be external hard drives. Those are commonly used by media creators. Unless they know that they should format to exFAT when buying, they will learn it when it's way too late.
I may be on the later category. It was ~15 years ago, and little Jimmy (me) got his first external hard drive. However, he didn't know about formats, and that he couldn't copy 4.5GB movies to his new toy.
Back then, it was either 4GB file size limit (FAT32), or it only works on one platform (NTFS, ext2, whatever Apple was using, ...)
Literally everything with USB can read FAT32, there's some old or incredibly simple stuff out there that doesn't read exFAT.
Manufacturers ideally want to spend as little as possible handling support for users, so they go with the option that isn't going to result in returns from people who think it doesn't work with their old printer or whatever.
Updated some recent Gigabyte mini-pc using EFI shell the other month. I had to have a USB flash drive with FAT32
I've had smart TVs that only updates with fat32 formatted USBs for firmware, for a concrete example.
Plus exfat has a LOT of caveats. Like no linking....
Could make it f2fs, but I'd bet Windows doesn't support that.
Wait, people use thumb drives with whatever formatting was on it when they ripped open the box? Next you’re gonna tell me people pick up random usb sticks off the ground and plug it in to their computer….
If you're cold they're cold. Plug them in and warm them up.
Most people don't know what a file system is
So when you need to file something, doesn't matter if it's made of wood or metal, you need a system.
That is the best way to hack a company
Bonus points if you make the .pdf have to be moved off the thumb drive to open
It may have a lot to do with licensing royalties. Exfat was created by Microsoft and is licensed for use. So why increase the cost of the device when you can just ship it with the older system that costs nothing.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/legal/intellectualproperty/tech-licensing/programs#exfat
There are so many open filesystems that I'm not sure that it's really a valid issue. It's more that MS values compatibility with prehistoric stuff more than anything. If it was up to them, we'd still be using wax tablets and styluses for compatibility's sake.
Recently tried to make a printer scan a file to an exFAT formatted thumb drive, didn't go well. Then tried moving a file from a windows to a linux machine using another exFAT formatted thumb drive, still no luck lol.
I get the impression that ext4 is more widely supported than exFAT.
Lol nah, exFAT is the only current FS (other than fat32) capable of being read AND written to by Linux, MacOS and Windows out of the box
It certainly should be. And as we're on it, Mainboards should support it too. It's a pain to create special partitions, and sometimes even use MBR instead of GPT, just for a BIOS update.
I pushed a friend to format an external hard drive with exFAT and not Apple's filesystem for compability, but something with the M2 MacBook eventually messed up the filesystem and it couldn't read it. Troubleshooting and reading forums, found there's something with the new Macs and exFAT. Ended up having to use an x86 apple device to recover the data.
I wish Windows would support f2fs. I'm tired of formatting drives as fat32 to give files to my sister. Windows somehow manages to corrupt it from unzipping a folder.
They did manage to move beyond BMP images, so anything is possible.
I still have to use MBR instead of GPT because there are people still running Windows versions that can't read it.
I managed to format my USB so that it's recognised by all three major OS. Can't remember the FS name ..
Windows won't even let you format them in fat32 anymore! Which sucks when the device you plan to use it for TECHNICALLY supports exfat, but there's lots of community posts about how the drivers for exfat regularly corrupt the drive if it tries to read/write too much...
What? That just means it will corrupt files on fat32 too but not the whole filesystem so you didn't notice. Return that shit.
With it being formatted as fat32 by default it means you can format it to whatever you want however you want when you get it.
...but....that's true of all FS's lol
Is it the case with window xp etc. because it's legacy systems (no matter how long ago their EOL was) that makes them do this sort of stuff
format it yourself? this is silly.
Ironic that it's called "fat32"
32 bit width for values
what's ironic about it?
Why can't they just make one universal standard format and then just stick to that in all systems rather than have 400 million random different incompatible file systems running around? Wouldn't 400 million and 1 be better?
Different file system formats have different strengths and weaknesses. There isn't a universal best one.
They should format it as f2fs
I didn't know this is an issue. I use ext2 on my flash drives, and everything is fine.
You can format a flash drive with whatever the hell file system you want. Just, don't expect anything formatted exFAT to work in any dedicated device made before 2019, nor even the majority of them made afterwards.
The ones who need to get their shit together are the manufacturers of printers, media players, car head units, set top boxes, game consoles, and all the other things into which you might want to insert a flash drive (or memory card) that is not a full-blown PC.