#Windows format exfat for mac unit size drivers#
#Windows format exfat for mac unit size update#

And two, that's because writing recovered data to the drive could destroy other data that hasn't been recovered yet. You can't save it back to the same drive you're recovering data from.

#Windows format exfat for mac unit size update#

We could refer to the exFAT system as an update to FAT32 introduced by Microsoft in Windows Vista with the intention of ending the headaches caused by the 4 GB limitation of its older brother. If you know there's more data on the ABC drive to recover than will fit on the 250 GB partition, then you'll need an external drive large enough to hold the recovered data. Its positive side is that it is perfectly compatible with Windows, macOS and GNU / Linux, and works without problems on the old USB 2.0. It works by examining the entire drive for BOF (beginning of file) markers, and then recovering whatever it can.ĭo not write anything to the drive you need to recover data from. This is a very long process, especially on such a large drive/partition. I recommend this one in particular because it has an option called Salvage All Files, which will attempt to recover data from a drive that won't mount on the desktop. It will run as a working demo and allow you to recover a few files to see if it works. But this was a Mac formatted partition to begin with. Formatting the drive wiped out the file table. Typical Windows recovery software depends on the file table to determine what files are on the drive and where to recover them from.

Ouch! It's odd that the mistakenly formatted drive won't show on the desktop.

It's okay to use exFAT on external drives since you can get the original data again from an NTFS drive if the external exFAT drive is having trouble.' Use NTFS, which is known to be stable and reliable. So Microsoft's thinking is probably something like this 'Don't use exFAT on an internal drive. In other words, it's still a work in progress. To make sense of why MS would cut off the use of exFAT for internal hard drives, it has to be understood that exFAT still doesn't have a final specification.

#Windows format exfat for mac unit size drivers#

The whole purpose of exFAT was to allow easy transfer of large files between platforms in a format that didn't require third party drivers on either the Mac or Windows to read the drive.

You can still format any type of external drive that way (hard drive, USB drives). What MS did was make a change in Windows 8 so that you cannot format an internal drive as exFAT. I looked again myself and found out this is not the case. Normally very accurate in their statements, so I assumed them to be correct. Kurt, what is your reference for saying that MS has dropped development for exFAT?