exFAT format??

[chokonen888]

I just built a new machine and want to test my luck with Win 7 on it. The OS HD is a SSD so I am really interested in using the exFAT format. A few of my friends said they were able to format their HD's to exFAT during the Win 7 install but for some reason, while my install allows me to format the HD, it does not allow me to choose the type of format...it just formats NTFS. My other machine running Win 7 has a second HD attached...only option for formatting there is NTFS as well. So...how can I format this SSD in exFAT without pulling it out and connecting it to another machine?

 

[Night Hawk]

First off Welcome to the seven forums!

There are two things to know first about seeing a drive formatted to the exFat file system. 1)Windows 2000, XP, Vista, and now 7 can only format any drive or partition to the NTFS or NT File System. Your friends obviously a 3rd party tool or recent MS driver update package 2) seeing the decription for that at Description of the exFAT file system driver update package

As you will see there the exFat option replaces the old Fat32 for the recent growth of removable devices like usb hard drives, flash drives, pen drives, and support for volumes over the 32gb limit seen with Fat32 itself. The term exFat refers to "extended Fat" or "extended File Allocation Tables".

 

[baarod]

I just built a new machine and want to test my luck with Win 7 on it. The OS HD is a SSD so I am really interested in using the exFAT format. A few of my friends said they were able to format their HD's to exFAT during the Win 7 install but for some reason, while my install allows me to format the HD, it does not allow me to choose the type of format...it just formats NTFS. My other machine running Win 7 has a second HD attached...only option for formatting there is NTFS as well. So...how can I format this SSD in exFAT without pulling it out and connecting it to another machine?

In order for Windows (even 7) to format exFAT the drive has to conform to the ARMD specification Parallel ATA - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia which by definition declares the drive removable rendering it ineligible for a Windows installation. In short, ask your friend for a screen shot of that option in Windows 7 setup. It should not be there.

Also, NTFS is required for Windows 7 as the OS now makes extensive use NTFS hard links between items in the WinSxS folder and their exposed conterparts in the rest of the Windows tree as well as some default Junctions used to maintain backward compatibility.

If someone did figure out how to 1) convince setup to go against it's nature and let you install on removable media 2) format it exFAT and 3) install 7 to a non-NTFS volume I'd really love to see it. Have those friends produce some proof.

 

[Night Hawk]

As soon as anything with Fat in it was mentioned I had to post the MS link! The default installation will automatically refuse installation to external devices, drives while you create the reverse seeing Windows installed from a usb flash drive but onto an NTFS volume.

External usb hard drives for storage, flash drives made bootable for installation as well as other things allow exFat even Fat32 there. That's how they come with factory Fat volumes. The driver packages would be something to replace the software usually seen with them.

 

[chokonen888]

Thanks for the replies guys. So what you're saying is Windows 7 cannot be installed on a HD using exFAT? only NTFS?

BTW, the SSD I'm using is one of those OCZ SATA II drives...it's not a USB/Flash Drive...

 

[Night Hawk]

From Vista up NTFS is the native file system. XP was backward compatible to Fat16/32 there. But anything "extended" not primary is bad news to start with for Windows. They have 7 running on a virtual hard drive even while the actual physical drives see the exFat format.

 

[LePoilu]

The OS HD is a SSD so I am really interested in using the exFAT format.

Why ?
There's no reason. Even you have an SSD, exFAT will not make your systeme faster or better because it's not the goal. exFAT it's just a patch over FAT32 for better support of large volumes...:huh:

 

[Night Hawk]

Due to external hard drives and other usb devices like flash drives being cross platform between Windows and Mac quite a bit MS is simply providing the necessary driver support for XP plus Vista since January there. Any form of Fat would be going backwards rather then forward anyways as far as Windows is concerned.

 

[darkassain]

you have to take into account that NTFS unlike fat32/16/exFat does write many times the last accessed metadata which in theory will wear the drive down...
although there is a simple fix for that....
TweakXP.com - Increase XP NTFS performance
while it says XP it does work in Vista and 7
although its already timestamp modification is already in 7 so there is not much performance loss from using NTFS and there should be gains from it...

 

[Night Hawk]

Originally it was taken into consideration for XP as well as being Vista/7 capable while XP is still seeing MS support. Once XP reaches the discontinued like 9x-ME, 2K you know the rest there.

The annoying part was giong out and buying an external hard drive(now internal! with NTFS!) and finding a factory Fat32 along with the software! That had to go!

 

[LePoilu]

Due to external hard drives and other usb devices like flash drives being cross platform between Windows and Mac quite a bit MS is simply providing the necessary driver support for XP plus Vista since January there. Any form of Fat would be going backwards rather then forward anyways as far as Windows is concerned.

As fat as I know exFAT is only supported by Windows at this time.
So for Mac compatibility, it's not the better idea, expecially when we know that NTFS read/write is possible under Mac and Linux.

By the way, you'r talking about external drive, but the main question is about a system drive... exFAT for system drive has no interest.

 

[Night Hawk]

As fat as I know exFAT is only supported by Windows at this time.
So for Mac compatibility, it's not the better idea, expecially when we know that NTFS read/write is possible under Mac and Linux.

By the way, you'r talking about external drive, but the main question is about a system drive... exFAT for system drive has no interest.

When you out and buy an external hard drive or usb flash drive that's the type of factory partition seen on models that list PC/Mac compatibility. Of course that being any form of Fat as well as the extended usually seeing a software is totally obsolete even for XP let Vista or 7!

The only real interest at this point for exFat is when storing X-Box type files like game saves, updates where Fat is required there. For the destktop OS NTFS for Windows is the must have being far superior as well as being far more secure in general.

Besides I'm on a strict 7 no Fat diet here!

 

[chokonen888]

Why ?
There's no reason. Even you have an SSD, exFAT will not make your systeme faster or better because it's not the goal. exFAT it's just a patch over FAT32 for better support of large volumes...:huh:

From what I've been told, exFAT seemed to be the format to go with for SSD drives. I could be wrong but I thought it improved performance and stopped the drives from stuttering?

 

[darkassain]

From what I've been told, exFAT seemed to be the format to go with for SSD drives. I could be wrong but I thought it improved performance and stopped the drives from stuttering?

i already explained above that most of the optimizations such as timestamps are disabled in the current Windows 7 builds....
Win7 is optimized for SSD's usuage...

 

[baarod]

From what I've been told, exFAT seemed to be the format to go with for SSD drives. I could be wrong but I thought it improved performance and stopped the drives from stuttering?

exFAT maybe if you're running XP since it had compatibility hacks to support FAT volumes. I have a 64MB SSD in my eee 900a. I'm super happy with it using NTFS. Those drives "stutter" because the first generation controller from Phison and JMicron were CRAP. You read the AnandTech article and the thread here right? http://www.sevenforums.com/news/6203-think-you-know-ssds-think-again.html

I have one of those controllers but it's running SATA mode which helps ALOT. The format of the disk has really very little to do with SSD performance aside from preventing last access timestamps as darkassain wrote.

That's probably the biggest gain right there -- tiny random writes are the bane of ALL SSDs from Intel to Samsung to JMicron to Indilinx just at varying degrees. Enable write caching if you can -- tends to increase the size of writes as they can often be coalesced. Turn off last access -- needed for servers but not so much desktops/laptops. Put databases and other files with that write access pattern on a spindle drive. And so on. Avoid tiny random writes.

 

[Night Hawk]

As I was mentioning earlier it sounds like your friends were running 7 through either virtual machines or on virtual hard drives. Vista and 7 are strictly NTFS native when installed normally to any internal hard drive without 3rd party software intervention.

 

[baarod]

As I was mentioning earlier it sounds like your friends were running 7 through either virtual machines or on virtual hard drives. Vista and 7 are strictly NTFS native when installed normally to any internal hard drive without 3rd party software intervention.

I can't think of a way it would even work without NTFS considering 7 is build entirely on hard links mapping package files from WinSxS to their proper places in the \windows tree.

 

[Night Hawk]

This is why I was saying a VM machine of some type or a virtual hard drive not any full working install on any exFat or Fat32 for that matter. What they probably meant was mounting the iso not installing to the exFat partitions in order to custom install 7. That's the only thing that would make sense on that.

When creating the usb key here for seeing 7 installed the UtraISO reformatted both the NTFS and ubuntu VFat primary right off of the flash drive here in order to make that bootable. The iso was mounted right away without a restart to see the installer fire up while booted in 7 and copy the setup files while testing that out on a few fakes lately.

 

[nate42nd]

I just wanted to throw something in after reading some of these posts. I just formatted an 8GB flash drive from NTFS to FAT. Windows 7 gave me the option to format in exFAT. I thought someone said Windows did not give you that option. Windows 7 (7077) did. FYI

 

[baarod]

I just wanted to throw something in after reading some of these posts. I just formatted an 8GB flash drive from NTFS to FAT. Windows 7 gave me the option to format in exFAT. I thought someone said Windows did not give you that option. Windows 7 (7077) did. FYI

It's just doesn't provide that option during install.