It stands for File Allocation Table 32 and was first released in 1996 by Microsoft. What Is Fat32?įAT32 is a file system used on many storage devices, including hard drives, memory cards, and USB flash drives. If you need to use exFAT on a device that doesn't support it natively, you can easily convert the file system from exFAT to FAT32 using a third-party tool like FAT32Format. As such, exFAT isn't as widely used as FAT32 or other formats like NTFS and HFS+. Additionally, because it's a proprietary format, only certain operating systems are able to access it.

It supports larger files than FAT32, and is used more often on newer systems such as Windows 10.ĮxFAT is more efficient than FAT32 in terms of speed, but it comes with the disadvantage of not being compatible with some older devices. It was created to provide better compatibility with external devices such as flash drives and digital cameras, while also increasing the capacity of storage available. What Is Exfat?ĮxFAT is a file system developed by Microsoft as an enhanced version of FAT32.

The software features an intuitive graphical user interface, making it simple to use even for those with limited technical knowledge. It supports drives up to 2TB in size and can be used to format numerous types of media including USB flash drives, hard disks and memory cards. Does a bootable USB drive require FAT32? For Windows, the bootable USB drive must be a FAT32, NTFS, or FATex file system, although NTFS is usually the default.FAT32Format offers a range of advantages over other formatting tools. Why is the FAT32 file system the most used? On Linux systems you have other options, but if you want it to be compatible with Windows, you have to choose one of three options for Windows: start with an empty USB stick and install it in your computer's USB port. This is because FAT32 is very suitable for use on devices with relatively little memory, it is not heavy and it speeds up existing access. Furthermore, Flash also chose FAT32 because it can be used on all devices, so transferring files to different devices is always easy. In general, exFAT drives write and read data faster than FAT32 drives. You can find many tests on the internet, but Flexense offers the most comprehensive comparison. What are disadvantages of FAT32 over NTFS? The same thing happened in the large file test.ĮxFAT not only wrote large files to a USB stick, it outperformed FAT32 in all tests.

FAT32 does not support DriveSpace compression.

None of the FAT file systems offers file protection, compression, fault tolerance, or NTFS disaster recovery features.įormat usb mac Should USB drive be NTFS or FAT32?.FAT32 may be slightly slower than FAT16, depending on the size of the hard drive.FAT32 is not compatible with older BIOS, motherboard, and disk management software. Select NTFS if you are going to use the flash drive to install Windows software or transfer files larger than 4 GB.

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