Q306233
Sign in to saveAlso known as Extended File Allocation Table, Extended FAT
exFAT (Extensible File Allocation Table) is a file system optimized for flash memory such as USB flash drives and SD cards, that was introduced by Microsoft in 2006. exFAT was proprietary until 28 August 2019, when Microsoft published its specification. Microsoft owns patents on several elements of its design.
Key facts
- Filesystem.name
- exFAT
- Filesystem.developer
- Microsoft
- Filesystem.full_name
- Extensible File Allocation Table
- Filesystem.introduction_os
- Windows Embedded CE 6.0
- Filesystem.directory_struct
- Table
- Filesystem.file_struct
- bitmap, linked list
- Filesystem.bad_blocks_struct
- Cluster tagging
- Filesystem.max_volume_size
- 128 PB, 512 TB recommended
- Filesystem.max_file_size
- 128 PB
- Filesystem.max_files_no
- up to 2,796,202 per directory
- Filesystem.max_filename_size
- 255 characters
- Filesystem.filename_character_set
- all Unicode characters except to and (encoding in UTF-16LE)
- Filesystem.dates_recorded
- Creation, last modified, last access
- Filesystem.date_range
- 1980-01-01 to 2107-12-31
- Filesystem.forks_streams
- No
- Filesystem.attributes
- Read-only, hidden, system, subdirectory, archive
- Filesystem.file_system_permissions
- ACL (Windows CE 6 only)
- Filesystem.compression
- No
via Wikipedia infobox
Official website
exFAT File System Specification - Win32 apps | Microsoft Learn
Specification of the exFat file system.
docs.microsoft.com →Link to the official site · 40,000 chars · not written by Vinony
Wikidata facts
Show 4 more facts
- inception
- 2006-11-00
- Stack Exchange tag
- stackoverflow.com/tags/exfat
- partition type identifier
- EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7
- maximum size or capacity
- 255
Sources (1)
via Wikidata · CC0
~10 min read
Article
17 sectionsContents
- History
- Features
- Efficiency
- Adoption
- Technical specifications
- File name lookup
- File and cluster pre-allocation
- Directory file set
- Metadata and checksums
- Flash optimizations
- Other implementations
- Legal status
- List of implementations
- See also
- Notes
- References
- External links
exFAT (Extensible File Allocation Table) is a file system optimized for flash memory such as USB flash drives and SD cards, that was introduced by Microsoft in 2006. exFAT was proprietary until 28 August 2019, when Microsoft published its specification. Microsoft owns patents on several elements of its design.
exFAT can be used where NTFS is not a feasible solution (due to data-structure overhead), but where a greater file-size limit than that of the standard FAT32 file system (i.e. 4 GB) is required.