In mid-2012, Microsoft released the exFAT file system as a 64-bit alternative to the older FAT32. This system was initially released for Windows, but about seven years later, in 2019, the company confirmed that it would also be open to the Linux ecosystem.
And now, it looks like the file system is getting big news again for anyone using this file system with Linux. With the new Linux kernel 6.2, exFAT has seen a number of performance improvements, much of which is due to improvements implemented by Sony.
Yuezhang Mo, engineer of Sony, came to confirm that a change to the file system can greatly improve its performance within the Linux ecosystem. This measure has been implemented in the latest versions of the Linux kernel, so that everyone can benefit from it.
Performance improvements can reach, in some scenarios, more than 57% compared to previously experienced. However, on average this value is closer to 35% improvements.
Regardless, the performance improvements can be quite significant for anyone using this file system across systems: Because it’s compatible with both Windows and Linux, many users choose to use it in portable device environments.
Interestingly, this isn’t the first time Sony has made improvements to the exFAT file system. In January of this year, the company had also revealed that some changes from exFAT could lead to performance improvements of nearly 85% in certain situations.
