ExFAT

exFAT
Developer(s)	Microsoft
Full name	Extensible File Allocation Table
Introduced	November 2006 with Windows Embedded CE 6.0
Partition IDs	MBR/EBR: 0x07 (same as for HPFS/NTFS); BDP/GPT: EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7;
Structures
Directory contents	Table
File allocation	bitmap, linked list
Bad blocks	Cluster tagging
Limits
Max volume size	128 PB, 512 TB recommended
Max file size	128 PB
Max no. of files	up to 2,796,202 per directory
Max filename length	255 characters
Allowed filename; characters	all Unicode characters except U+0000 (NUL) to U+001F (US) / (slash) \ (backslash) : (colon) * (asterisk) ? (question mark) " (quote) < (less than) > (greater than) and \| (pipe); (encoding in UTF-16LE)
Features
Dates recorded	Creation, last modified, last access
Date range	1980-01-01 to 2107-12-31
Date resolution	10 ms for last modified time,; 10 ms for creation time,; 2 seconds day for access date;
Forks	No
Attributes	Read-only, hidden, system, subdirectory, archive
File system; permissions	ACL (Windows CE 6 only)
Transparent; compression	No
Transparent; encryption	Yes, EFS supported in Windows 10 v1607 and Windows Server 2016 or later.
Other
Supported; operating systems	Windows Embedded CE 6.0; Windows XP SP2 and later; Windows Server 2003 SP2 and later; Linux distros with either Linux kernel v5.4+ or FUSE; FreeBSD with FUSE; Mac OS X 10.6 and later; Android 13 and some devices running previous versions; iOS 13.1 and later; ChromeOS;

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.

exFAT has been adopted by the SD Association as the default file system for SDXC and SDUC cards larger than 32 GB.

Windows 8 and later versions natively support exFAT boot, and support the installation of the system in a special way to run in the exFAT volume.