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File Allocation Table

lastmod 2024-07-11created 2015-12-108 edits

File Allocation Table (FAT) is a computer file system architecture widely used in most memory cards installed in devices such as digital cameras and in many computer systems. Because the FAT file system is relatively simple, it is commonly found on floppy disks, flash memory cards, digital cameras, and many other portable devices. The performance of FAT is poorly regarded compared with most other file systems. This is because it uses overly simple data structures that waste operating time, and it does not make good use of disk space when there are many small files.

For floppy disks, FAT is standardized as ECMA-107 and ISO/IEC 9293. These standards include only FAT12 and FAT16, without long filename support.

The FAT file system is technically relatively well documented, and virtually every existing operating system for PCs supports it. It has therefore become a useful format for solid-state memory cards and a convenient way to share data between operating systems.

exFAT

Short for 'Extended File Allocation Table', also known as FAT64. Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 (both x86 and x64) users can use exFAT support by downloading and installing update KB955704 from Microsoft, and it is supported from Windows Vista Service Pack 1 and Windows Embedded CE 6.0. It was developed to overcome the limitations of FAT32 and is a file system for high-capacity flash memory media. Free space calculation is faster, and file deletion is also faster. While the maximum file size in FAT32 is 4 gigabytes, in exFAT the maximum file size is 16 exabytes.

How to install

exFAT on CentOS7 

$ sudo yum install epel-release
$ sudo yum update
$ curl -O http://li.nux.ro/download/nux/dextop/el7/x86_64/nux-dextop-release-0-1.el7.nux.noarch.rpm
$ sudo yum localinstall nux-dextop-release-0-1.el7.nux.noarch.rpm
$ sudo yum update
$ sudo yum install exfat-utils fuse-exfat

exFAT on Ubuntu

On older versions of Ubuntu, install as follows. 

$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:relan/exfat
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install fuse-exfat exfat-utils

On Ubuntu 14.041, it can be installed directly without adding a PPA, as follows. 

$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install exfat-utils exfat-fuse

How to use

Ubuntu: 

$ sudo apt-get install exfat-fuse exfat-utils
$ sudo mkdir /media/exfat
$ sudo mount -t exfat /dev/sdxx /media/exfat

See also

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References

  1. The exact version needs to be checked. ↩

author Zer0 sitemap