Different filesystems and their advantages (exFAT, EXT3, EXT4, XFS, NTFS)
Always on the lookout for improvements, I am eager to try new technologies as well as computer configurations to see what we can gain. The vfat filesystem is pretty cool and improves on the old fat32. But let see what are all the pros and cons.
VFAT
Pros
Cons
exFAT
Pros
- Supported by Mac, Linux and Windows XP SP2 with this patch or SP3.
- Works well for USB keys or backup drives
Cons
- Has no permission like ext3. In linux you cannot give discrete permission to individual folders. You provide the default permission when you mount the drive. See this article on how to correctly mount vfat partitions in Linux
FAT32
Pros
- Supported everywhere
Cons
- Maximum file size of 4GB. This can be bothersome even for developers. I remember one time not being able to do a simple initial git checkout because the repo size was larger than 4GB and it stopped at 3.99GB complaining about "fatal: write error: File too large".
- Has no permission like ext3. In linux you cannot give discrete permission to individual folders. You provide the default permission when you mount the drive. See this article on how to correctly mount vfat partitions in Linux
NTFS
Pros
Cons
Benchmarks
[graph units="MB/s"]
[item title="VFAT" value="56"]
[item title="exFAT" value="56"]
[/graph]
FAT or NTFS has restircation to download the git source file size more than 4 GB, hence at 3.99 GB reaches it will show error as \"fatal: write error: File too large\",
solution:
format drive as Ext4 type and reuse if you using linux/ubantu system then use it.