Anyone hear about the exFAT file system, the successor to FAT32?

On Fri, 28 Aug 2009 14:10:28 -0700, Harry wrote:

5. Microsoft has not released the official exFAT file
specification, and a licence from Microsoft is required in order to
make and distribute exFAT implementations[8]

Any guesses on how long until it's reverse-engineered and there's a Linux/
xBSD driver? Software patents be damned...

Dan

On Mon, 31 Aug 2009 17:00:55 +0000, Dan Lenski wrote:

On Fri, 28 Aug 2009 14:10:28 -0700, Harry wrote:

5. Microsoft has not released the official exFAT file
specification, and a licence from Microsoft is required in order to
make and distribute exFAT implementations[8]

Any guesses on how long until it's reverse-engineered and there's a
Linux/ xBSD driver? Software patents be damned...

Dan

Apparently I should have Googled that first. There's been working read-
only support for exFAT for the Linux kernel since January: http://
groups.google.com/group/fa.linux.kernel/browse_thread/
thread/903eb182127e8f21/e2e23eeb3a016268

It seems they haven't worked on it since because... no one uses or cares
about exFAT?

Dan

Dan Lenski wrote:
On Mon, 31 Aug 2009 17:00:55 +0000, Dan Lenski wrote:

On Fri, 28 Aug 2009 14:10:28 -0700, Harry wrote:

5. Microsoft has not released the official exFAT file
specification, and a licence from Microsoft is required in order to
make and distribute exFAT implementations[8]

Any guesses on how long until it's reverse-engineered and there's a
Linux/ xBSD driver? Software patents be damned...

Dan

Apparently I should have Googled that first. There's been working read-
only support for exFAT for the Linux kernel since January: http://
groups.google.com/group/fa.linux.kernel/browse_thread/
thread/903eb182127e8f21/e2e23eeb3a016268

It seems they haven't worked on it since because... no one uses or cares
about exFAT?

Quite possible.

Arno

On Aug 31, 11:31*pm, Arno wrote:
Dan Lenski wrote:
On Mon, 31 Aug 2009 17:00:55 +0000, Dan Lenski wrote:
On Fri, 28 Aug 2009 14:10:28 -0700, Harry wrote:

5. Microsoft has not released the official exFAT file
* * specification, and a licence from Microsoft is required in order to
* * make and distribute exFAT implementations[8]

Any guesses on how long until it's reverse-engineered and there's a
Linux/ xBSD driver? *Software patents be damned...

Dan
Apparently I should have Googled that first. *There's been working read-
only support for exFAT for the Linux kernel since January: http://
groups.google.com/group/fa.linux.kernel/browse_thread/
thread/903eb182127e8f21/e2e23eeb3a016268
It seems they haven't worked on it since because... no one uses or cares
about exFAT?

Quite possible.

Arno- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

I gather exFat is part of Vista SP1

I've never seen a disk using it though.

Michael

On Aug 30, 10:23*am, Mike Tomlinson wrote:
In article , Yousuf Khan
writes

Came across this article the other day, it's a description of
Microsoft's latest FAT file system driver, meant mainly for use with the
newest generation of bigger thumb drives. It's called exFAT (extended),
and it's the successor to FAT32.

Would have thought it's more likely to be an underhand way of
reinforcing their patent claim on the FAT filing system, to be surer of
extracting licencing fees.

It's looking that way.

Yousuf Khan

YKhan wrote
Mike Tomlinson wrote
Yousuf Khan wrote

Came across this article the other day, it's a description of
Microsoft's latest FAT file system driver, meant mainly for use
with the newest generation of bigger thumb drives. It's called
exFAT (extended), and it's the successor to FAT32.

Would have thought it's more likely to be an underhand
way of reinforcing their patent claim on the FAT filing
system, to be surer of extracting licencing fees.

It's looking that way.

Only for conspiracy theorists.

The industry will just ignore exFAT, you watch.

In article
s.com, YKhan writes

It's looking that way.

I wonder if they'll try a retrospective land grab? Claim that exFAT is
based on prior art, so they can extract licence fees for FAT too?

Wouldn't put anything past M$.

--
(\__/)
(='.'=) Bunny says Windows 7 is Vi$ta reloaded.
(")_(") http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/windows_7.png

On Aug 30, 12:55*pm, Arno wrote:
YKhan wrote:
On Aug 29, 2:18?pm, "Rod Speed" wrote:
Havent seen anyone else fix the 4GB problem tho.
Isn't there any number of open-source sophisticated file systems that
fix the 4GB problem?

Basically all modern ones. I guss the comment is about FAT with 4GB support. However, given that almost nothing needs files 4GB

on mobile storage devices, I guess calling it a "problem" is a
bit of an overstatement.

I can see DVD ISO's going over 4GB's easily. Even the internal VOB
files on DVD's would be that large.

If you need to maintain Windows-world compatibility, why not just
format to NTFS in this case? And there's decent reverse-engineered
NTFS fs read/write drivers for Linux these days.

With the additional features of exFAT such as
cluster bitmaps and stuff, the overhead of the metadata might not be
much larger between them. Most vendors adopted FAT on flash drives
because of the small overhead of the metadata, and the fact that most
implementations of FAT were already public domain.

Indeed, especially the later reason.

Also pretty much all of file systems available for Linux, apart from
the Windows ones, are open source, like IBM JFS, SGI XFS, not to
mention the default EXTxFS fs's, and ReiserFS. If the set top
designers standardized on one of these fs's, then it's simply a matter
of packaging a user-space driver on Windows which will work with all
versions of Windows, and then eventually Microsoft would have to build
it in.

Yousuf Khan

On or about Wed, 2 Sep 2009 02:48:20 +0100 did Mike Tomlinson
dribble thusly:

In article
s.com, YKhan writes

It's looking that way.

I wonder if they'll try a retrospective land grab? Claim that exFAT is
based on prior art, so they can extract licence fees for FAT too?

Wouldn't put anything past M$.

You can't patent something based on prior art.

On Sep 2, 2:25*pm, Mike Ruskai
wrote:
On or about Wed, 2 Sep 2009 02:48:20 +0100 did Mike Tomlinson
dribble thusly:

In article
s.com, YKhan writes

It's looking that way.

I wonder if they'll try a retrospective land grab? *Claim that exFAT is
based on prior art, so they can extract licence fees for FAT too?

Wouldn't put anything past M$.

You can't patent something based on prior art.

I did hear of patent case where a company was trying to patent an
idea / method that I had been sold publically, world wide for 20
years. If felt like they were trying to patent the wheel.