exFAT vs FAT32 ?

Discussion in 'Windows 7' started by Shadows, Feb 20, 2010.

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  1. Shadows

    Shadows MDL Novice

    Feb 17, 2010
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    I just wonder if anyone has experience with exFAT, and what is the difference between exFAT and FAT32? :eek:
     
  2. Stannieman

    Stannieman MDL Guru

    Sep 4, 2009
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  3. Michel

    Michel MDL Expert

    Jul 29, 2009
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    I am waiting for a exNTFS :p
     
  4. Stannieman

    Stannieman MDL Guru

    Sep 4, 2009
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    Yeah, we were also waiting for winfs...
    But harddrives are much bigger now than when ntfs was developed, and prices of ssds will continue to drop, so hopefully we'll see something new in Windows 8 that's works more efficient with ssds.
    MS will probably use the nt 7.0 kernel for it so better do it all in once with new filesystem etc.
     
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  5. Shadows

    Shadows MDL Novice

    Feb 17, 2010
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    The reason I asked is that I have a WD Eksternal hard drive that only supports FAT, but I'm not sure what format I should format it with exFAT or FAT32, what do you recommend? :)
     
  6. Stannieman

    Stannieman MDL Guru

    Sep 4, 2009
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    I don't know if a hdd supperts exfat, but why would it not support ntfs?
     
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  7. Stannieman

    Stannieman MDL Guru

    Sep 4, 2009
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    What's given on that page is an utility to restore the partitions and filesystem (fat32) like they originally were. Hdds come with fat32 to make shure they work on as much operating systems as possible, but if you don't use it on something older than windows 2000 then ntfs is fine.
     
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  8. Shadows

    Shadows MDL Novice

    Feb 17, 2010
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    OK. Then I'm trying ntfs. Thank you so very much for your feedback, it is really appreciated. :)
     
  9. Stannieman

    Stannieman MDL Guru

    Sep 4, 2009
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    Just for info:
    A harddrive can only be distroyed by software in such a way that it's hard to recover when
    - you de a bad firmware flash, you can't do this accidentally cause you need a special tool from the manufacterer, most hdds never get an update unless there are serious problems with that model
    - you do a bad lowlevel format, and I think this can only be done in factory with modern drives, or otherwise with tools that are very hard to find

    In all other cases the hdd can always be repared with diskpart, a commandline tool that comes standard with windows.
     
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