Microsoft is finally removing the FAT32 partition size limit in Windows 11

> And I actually find this problem even worse between Linux and macOS than between Windows and either of the two. Until quite recently, there was no meaningful common denominator between those two for USB drives.

I thought exfat was ~universal and decent?

Edit: Also UDF, thanks to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41265870 for reminding me

I make up things all the time and then call them 'requirements'. Its just the way the industry works.

If he really wants to further this 'nice old Microsoft guy' image that he is pushing on youtube, he should really do a video on the truth behind the whole SoftwareOnline.com situation.

He's also apparently threatening legal action against people who discuss it https://x.com/endermanch/status/1820726634485350727

Have any people from Microsoft corroborated what he claims? Whatever I have heard of him is all from his channel and articles citing him.

But then Dave Cutler and Raymond Chen appeared on his channel for hour-long Windows history podcasts so maybe that's an endorsement of his claims.

Not surprising. That man seems so off. Like how he always says he's just doing his videos for the likes, while at the same time using the videos to advertise his book. Or how he leans so heavily into having worked at Microsoft but then doesn't actually seem to have worked on more than a handful of projects there (his videos get repetitive).

> The company has marketed its products through pop-up ads and unsolicited e-mails that offer a “free scan” of the computer. If a user elected to have the free scan performed, a software program downloaded, installed, and executed on the user’s computer.

> Once the free scans were installed, consumers were trapped in a labyrinth of advertisements to purchase an upgrade,” Tassi said. “Each new advertisement increased the consumer’s sense of fear, repeatedly warning of threats the computer faced if the user didn't purchase the product. In some instances, the ads kept coming until the free scan software was uninstalled or the consumer purchased the product. But the uninstall option didn’t always work properly and parts of the software remained on the computer.

One step forward several steps back though, with all the other terrible crap like copying your entire drive to OneDrive by default then attempting to make you subscribe when it fills up, adding all kinds of telemetry and ad tracking, shoving Copilot in your face whenever it can, just to name a few.

exFAT is generally considered the more modern replacement.

Hence what I wrote above:

> Would wish the industry could agree on using something more modern and reliable.

There’s no techical reason why we can’t use NTFS on Macs or APFS on Windows, if the industry was willing work towards that goal together.

Zfs should be installable on all three operating systems afaik though

ZFS. There is never a good reason not to use ZFS. That's how it got its name -- "the last word in filesystems".

UDF should have been a viable alternative, but as I’ve said elsewhere it only works for disks smaller than 2T bytes with 512-byte sectors, and the Windows behaviour around it seems strange.

obligatory

https://xkcd.com/927/

Main reason that exFAT is less popular is because Microsoft still owns some of the patents on the underlying tech (but has permitted the Linux kernel access to those patents so Linux can have exFAT support). That makes it less popular for all the various pieces of niche hardware that accept microSD cards to extend storage.

Device makers that do support exFAT have to pay Microsoft for every sale. It's why for example the Nintendo Switch enables exFAT as a "system update"; that way Nintendo doesn't have to pay Microsoft for every single switch sold, only the ones that are actually using exFAT for external storage.

I think the last of those patents will expire by 2027? You'll probably see an uptick in exFAT use by then.

Something where you don’t risk being hit by a Microsoft patent even when you’re not Linux?

(Also that’s still a floppy-grade filesystem, no journalling or anything.)

Few features - yes. Easier to implement - absolutely not. The first sector has 9 different formats that cannot be reliably distinguished and are partially incompatible / overlapping each other: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BIOS_parameter_block

And then there is the thing with the long file names extensions because FAT originally could only do 8.3 names.

I know because i tried to write a FAT driver myself.

For drives under 2T bytes (assuming 512-byte sectors), and the Windows behavior I’ve seen around it seems a bit strange—it takes a very long time to write out its cache before allowing you to disconnect the drive, for reasons I don’t understand.

I'll happily celebrate standards that have stood the test of time, but FAT32 really hasn't. The 4 GB file size limit has been very painful for anything recording videos to SD cards.