An Open-Source exFAT Implementation Reaches v1.0

[Redi44]

This exFAT driver is – just like NTFS-3g – based on FUSE which means that this driver is no simpler to use under OSX than NTFS-3g.
UDF on the other hand works almost everywhere out of the box.

Look, I've tried both the free and the paid version of the NTFS driver, neither survived update to 10.7 and it also fraked up the "read-only" mode. After that I just gave up...

[cmurf]

Still it looks like the best format if you want to move data between OS X, Win and Linux....

It's for (slow) flash meda. It has a single FAT, instead of two like FAT12, FAT16, FAT32. And it's not journaled. So if you need exFAT ostensibly for a large file system with many files, you're still better off with NTFS and using NTFS-3G from MacPorts to get it on a Mac. It's included in most Linux distros. If you have individual files larger than 4GB, and it's a large file system (but not many files, just large ones) then exFAT is OK but still not as good an option as NTFS.

I'm glad there's an open source option. But to see this format proliferate would be unfortunate. It brings nothing to the table that can't be done with NTFS. UDF would have been a better option for vendors to go with. But not even Apple offers formatting USB sticks or hard drives as UDF. So even though technologically and licensing wise it's superior, for some reason market forces chose the b.s. inferior, IP and royalty encumbered option yet again.

[cmurf]

But not even Apple offers formatting USB sticks or hard drives as UDF.

CLI tool only, but is still in 10.8.

man newfs_udf