exFAT
Ranked 9 of 10 filesystems by recommenders
Recommended as the most portable file system, with native read and write support on Windows, Mac and Linux. Critics agree it lacks journaling, so it can corrupt data after a crash.
Recommended as the most portable file system, with native read and write support on Windows, Mac and Linux. Critics agree it lacks journaling, so it can corrupt data after a crash.
15 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 8
- criticize it
- 7
- approval share
- 53%
Recommended in 5 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 8 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 1.1 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 5 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Native support on Windows, Mac, Linux
“Windows and MacOS have native support, and more and more Linux distros are getting support as well”
Comment from 11 Nov 2025 in “SanDisk launches dongle-like Extreme Fit USB-C flash drive with up to 1 TB” “exFAT has native support on Windows, Mac, and Linux, and there are drivers for BSDs and others.”
Comment from 10 Mar 2026 in “Flash media longevity testing – 6 years later” “exFAT has been r/w on all 3 OSes for many years now, and it also supports files >4GB.”
Comment from 8 Jan 2026 in “Native Amiga Filesystems on macOS / Linux / Windows with FUSE” - Comment from 7 May 2026 in “SQLite Is a Library of Congress Recommended Storage Format”
- Comment from 22 Jan 2026 in “30 Years of ReactOS”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
No journaling, risks data corruption
“exFAT has the lovely feature of potentially not only corrupting the file, but also corrupting the metadata for the surrounding system as well.”
Comment from 7 May 2026 in “SQLite Is a Library of Congress Recommended Storage Format” “exFAT is terrible for a number of reasons, but in my case the thing I had to deal with was the lack of journaling”
Comment from 7 May 2026 in “SQLite Is a Library of Congress Recommended Storage Format” “due to the lack of journaling, and its buggy performance on macOS”
Comment from 22 Jan 2026 in “30 Years of ReactOS” - Comment from 11 Nov 2025 in “SanDisk launches dongle-like Extreme Fit USB-C flash drive with up to 1 TB”
- Comment from 18 Feb 2026 in “15 years later, Microsoft morged my diagram”
Widely seen as flawed
“exFAT is terrible for a number of reasons, but in my case the thing I had to deal with was the lack of journaling”
Comment from 7 May 2026 in “SQLite Is a Library of Congress Recommended Storage Format” “exFAT is crappy, but not obsolete.”
Comment from 20 Jan 2026 in “Prediction: Microsoft Is Going to Do the Funniest Thing Imaginable”
Other filesystems people recommend
The four most recommended other filesystems, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
See all 10 filesystems, rankedWhat people said
17 of the 18 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“exFAT has the lovely feature of potentially not only corrupting the file, but also corrupting the metadata for the surrounding system as well.”
“exFAT, at least for most cases, is the only filesystem you can plug into most devices”
“Everywhere exFAT is supported now. Windows, Mac, Linux, FreeBSD would be fine.”
“exFAT is terrible for a number of reasons, but in my case the thing I had to deal with was the lack of journaling”
“exFAT has native support on Windows, Mac, and Linux, and there are drivers for BSDs and others.”
“exFAT is the best portable filesystem”
“I use it too, when forced.”
“exFAT not being journaled and having to engineer around it”
“due to the lack of journaling, and its buggy performance on macOS”
“exFAT also had reasonable support for Windows, Linux, and MacOS”
“exFAT is crappy, but not obsolete.”
“exFAT has been r/w on all 3 OSes for many years now, and it also supports files >4GB.”
“If only exfat had symbolic links.”
“Depending on your pain tolerance, FAT32, exFAT, and ZFS are all reasonable choices.”
“is limited in many other ways compared to ext4 or NTFS”
“really not resilient enough that I could trust GBs of data on it”
“Windows and MacOS have native support, and more and more Linux distros are getting support as well”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.