What are exFAT, NTFS and FAT File Systems? What is the difference and which one you should USE?

What are exFAT, NTFS and FAT File Systems? What is the difference and which one you should USE?

Introduction to File System:

In computer, file system is a system, used to store data into memory or to retrieve the data. Well, what happens when we do not follow the system rules? Why are we using file-system? The answer to all those questions is to arrange data in a specific pattern in memory which will let you to access the data easily. By separating data into pieces and giving each piece a name, would make it easy to find the data. The piece of data is called file and to manage these files with certain rules and logics called file system. There are many kind of systems each one has different properties, structure, logic, security, size and more. File systems can be used on numerous storage devices one of the common storage device which follow these logics is the HDD (Hard Disk). Other kinds of Medias  which use file system are flash memories, magnetic tapes, SD cards and Optical discs.

File Systems:

There need an interface between file systems and the OS. This interface can be textual such as CLI or graphical such as GUI. If graphical then folder, sub directories containing documents files or nested folders are often used.

• FAT (File Allocation Table)

FAT file system is supported by almost all operating systems for personal computers including Windows. Over years, the system has expanded from FAT 12 to FAT 16 and FAT 32. It was introduced in 1977 with Standalone Disk Basic-80. However, since the system has been in use for so long, it also comes with a certain limitations. While they might not been a problem when the system was first introduced, after all these years, the drawbacks seem serious. Individual files have an upper limit of 4 GB on the FAT 32 system. A partition formatted with FAT32 has a limit of 8TB which might not be too big of a problem now, but it is noticed by more heavy duty users. FAT file systems are the default file systems for removable media except CDs and DVDs. FAT 12 was suitable only for floppy discs, FAT 16, and FAT 32 are suitable for higher data storage devices.

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•     NTFS (New Technology File System)

For many purposes, the NTFS file system is superior to FAT in terms of features and reliability. It was introduced with Windows NT OS in 1993 allowed ACL based permissions. An Access Control List (ACL) is list of permissions attach to an object, in short which users or system processes are granted to access objects , as well what operations (read, write, read/write, hidden ) are allowed to perform on objects. Other features supported by NTFS are encryption, compression, multiple file streams etc.

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• exFAT (Extended File Allocation Table)

exFAT is a Microsoft file system introduced in 2006 for the optimization of flash memories such as USB flash drives and SD Cards. exFAT has been adobted by SD Card Association as default file system for Security Digital Extended Card (SDXC) cards larger than 32 GiB.

Like NTFS, this format too supports a large file and disk partition size limits therefore, you can surpass the 4 GB limit of the previous system. Being an upgrade over FAT 32 system, this is an obvious option to enjoy the benefits of the exFAT file system without the limitations. It is also compatible with NTFS, works with every available version of Windows as well as Mac OS. On Linux, if you find it not working by default, there are software available to enable compatibility.