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Will Mavericks support ExFAT?

M

MacNoobGuy

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Apr 18, 2012
497
0
hey guys, i just wanted to know if OSX Mavericks will support ExFAT or not. i'm about to change all of my hard drives to ExFAT from NTFS and i wanted to know if Mavericks will support ExFAT or not?

i used google but nothing came up...

thanks!
 
So.. why? ExFAT really isn't designed for normal disks and is optimized for flash drives (i.e. SDHC). I assume this is for drive sharing between Windows and OSX but honestly NTFS is way more robust than ExFAT.

ExFAT was already supported in ML so I have no reason to believe it won't be supported in Mavericks. Don't have an external drive handy to see what disk utility can do.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ExFAT

Also, according to this post:

http://prateekvjoshi.wordpress.com/2013/04/21/ntfs-write-support-on-os-x-mountain-lion/

ML had "hidden" support for writing to NTFS anyways. I have not tried this as I don't have an external drive that I am about to format NTFS. I may however try to find a drive at work and see if 10.9 has better support for NTFS. I'm a little curious now.
 
MacNoobGuy said:
hey guys, i just wanted to know if OSX Mavericks will support ExFAT or not. i'm about to change all of my hard drives to ExFAT from NTFS and i wanted to know if Mavericks will support ExFAT or not?

i used google but nothing came up...

thanks!
Click to expand...

Disk Utility has the option to format as exFAT in Mavericks.
 
I don't believe it can be installed on exFAT but it can read and write to exFAT just fine. I use a 250gb hard drive as an iTunes/Steam/Documents share between Win8 and Mavericks.
 
hakuryuu said:
So.. why? ExFAT really isn't designed for normal disks and is optimized for flash drives (i.e. SDHC). I assume this is for drive sharing between Windows and OSX but honestly NTFS is way more robust than ExFAT.

ExFAT was already supported in ML so I have no reason to believe it won't be supported in Mavericks. Don't have an external drive handy to see what disk utility can do.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ExFAT

Also, according to this post:

http://prateekvjoshi.wordpress.com/2013/04/21/ntfs-write-support-on-os-x-mountain-lion/

ML had "hidden" support for writing to NTFS anyways. I have not tried this as I don't have an external drive that I am about to format NTFS. I may however try to find a drive at work and see if 10.9 has better support for NTFS. I'm a little curious now.
Click to expand...

well yeah i just want to use ExFAT for external drives and wipe my current NTFS drives.

----------
leman said:
exFAT has been supported in OS X since Snow Leopard...
Click to expand...

i know, but i thought they might drop support for it.
 
MacNoobGuy said:
well yeah i just want to use ExFAT for external drives and wipe my current NTFS drives. ...
Click to expand...
Like hakuryuu, I am confused why you want to sacrifice the proven reliability of NTFS in favor of exFAT. exFAT is not going to be any more reliable just because you use it on an external drive.
 
MisterMe said:
Like hakuryuu, I am confused why you want to sacrifice the proven reliability of NTFS in favor of exFAT. exFAT is not going to be any more reliable just because you use it on an external drive.
Click to expand...
Maybe because you can't write to NTFS in Mac?
 
MisterMe said:
Like hakuryuu, I am confused why you want to sacrifice the proven reliability of NTFS in favor of exFAT. exFAT is not going to be any more reliable just because you use it on an external drive.
Click to expand...
exFAT has been around long enough that I'm sure we would've heard of any reliability issues with it.
 
MisterMe said:
How on Earth is that relevant?
Click to expand...

Because a reasonable interpretation of the post you replied to would be "Write without requiring third-party solutions" rather than "There is no way a Mac ever could write NTFS". Hence the clarification.

Additionally, MikhailT makes a relevant point.
 
itickings said:
Because a reasonable interpretation of the post you replied to would be "Write without requiring third-party solutions" rather than "There is no way a Mac ever could write NTFS". ...
Click to expand...
No, that is not a reasonable interpretation. By the same logic that outie2k asserted that Macs can't write NTFS, he can also assert that Macs cannot read Photoshop files.
 
MisterMe said:
No, that is not a reasonable interpretation. By the same logic that outie2k asserted that Macs can't write NTFS, he can also assert that Macs cannot read Photoshop files.
Click to expand...

Since the question starting this thread was whether or not Mavericks will support ExFat, it is very easy to assume that we are talking about what Mavericks (or at least OSX) supports. I therefore pointed out that third-party software was required for NTFS since it would be very easy to get the wrong impression reading the thread, ergo very relevant.

This is obviously going nowhere pretty fast, so I'm leaving this discussion. I mean, your contrived Photoshop-example isn't even making sense (or for that matter clashing with my reasonable interpretation if it did), so... :p

Feel free to reply and have the last word, I'm unsubscribing.
 
Bear said:
exFAT has been around long enough that I'm sure we would've heard of any reliability issues with it.
Click to expand...

There are lots of reliability issues, especially when shared with other devices like cameras. It really is intended for memory cards and so on, not entire disks.
 
TO ANSWER THE THREAD QUESTION.

I use exFAT daily on all USB drives and external USBs I own. No issues at all running Mavericks DP1 and since there is little to no reason to depreciate support, I am going to take a calculated guess and say this will not be removed for a long while - think 5 to 10 years minimum.
 
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