4 ms·

Patents aside are there any real alternatives to FAT that are even remotely widely adopted?

sneak 6y ago
There are many unencumbered filesystems with free software implementations. Sadly, compatible filesystem innovation seems to have stagnated about twenty years ago; all of the cool filesystems these days are developed by OS teams, for their specific OS. It's a bummer.
- fuzzfactor 6y ago
  FAT32 patents are now fully expired, making it the most compatible filesystem for which any new devices should support at a minimum, from this point forward. Most likely the best approach for NTFS is to standardize at ASTM where Microsoft could contribute as much documentation & volunteer effort as they would like (or not), regardless with other members a full-consensus ASTM standard could then be agreed upon & maintained from that point forward. Should have been done a long tome ago for both FAT32 & NTFS as well as all other file systems which are intended for widespread use. It's just not something where you want to have a moving target, it basicaly needs to stay the same forever once it gets into widespread use. Important data is too important for any less than truly standard file sysstems.
  - xvilka 6y ago
    NTFS would be a poor choice. This FS is very complex, undocumented, and without a good complete open source implementation (NTFS 3G is far from complete and wasn't updated for many years already).
    - fuzzfactor 6y ago
      At ASTM, overcoming those type of problems with complete consensus, then independently publishing and maintaining the resulting Standard Specification into the next century or beyond is just an everyday (everyyear actually) occurrence. That's exactly the reason for the existence of the Society to begin with. I would start by calling for action from an appropriate committee, submitting all available documentation from NTFS-3G plus from Paragon. Microsoft, and anyone else who has anything to offer that they would not like to become overlooked. Then hammer away in committee, especially with the full cooperation of Microsoft and all the great engineers who do have some rare expertise, it should be possible to publish like never before as an international ASTM Standard within a year, and maintain it from that point forward with all revisions rigorously reviewed and documented. After that engineers everywhere will have the technical reference material they have been lacking when they need to make sure their implementations of NTFS are as compatible with each other as they can be, even better allowing for absolute full compliance by all going forward.
- moonchild 6y ago
  ZFS is only 15 years old and continues to be improved (though granted, all of the real innovations have already happened). It works on (in order) Solaris, FreeBSD, Linux, MacOS, and Windows.
  - dogma1138 6y ago
    ZFS is way too complex and finicky for these small scale applications.
  - sneak 6y ago
    ZFS does not reliably work on macOS. If you think otherwise I encourage you to try: I have.
    - moonchild 6y ago
      Maybe not (there's a reason I put macos and windows last), but the fact remains that people have put effort into making it portable, and it shows: ZFS runs well on more OSes than most other (non-toy) FSes.
userbinator 6y ago
Closest may be ISO 9660 or UDF, although those are aimed more towards write-once/read-only media.
- pwg 6y ago
  UDF works fine with read/write media (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Disk_Format https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Disk_Format). I had several USB flash sticks that I formatted as UDF under Linux that I used to transfer files between Linux and W10. You get large files, long file names, and read/write compatibility on Linux and W10 with a UDF format USB stick.
  - dogma1138 6y ago
    UDF doesn’t work that well for true R/W storage, it’s more suited for appendable or rewritable storage and from my experience the format is so bloody fragmented version wise that half the time when you format it on one OS you don’t know what will work on the other, sometimes the other would read it just fine but won’t be able to modify it without reformat in some cases modifying it makes it unreadable on other devices, it’s quite a mess...
cozzyd 6y ago
For microcontrollers, https://github.com/littlefs-project/littlefs https://github.com/littlefs-project/littlefs has some mindshare (although not sure how much there is outside the mbed world).

There are many unencumbered filesystems with free software implementations. Sadly, compatible filesystem innovation seems to have stagnated about twenty years ago; all of the cool filesystems these days are developed by OS teams, for their specific OS. It's a bummer.

fuzzfactor 6y ago
FAT32 patents are now fully expired, making it the most compatible filesystem for which any new devices should support at a minimum, from this point forward. Most likely the best approach for NTFS is to standardize at ASTM where Microsoft could contribute as much documentation & volunteer effort as they would like (or not), regardless with other members a full-consensus ASTM standard could then be agreed upon & maintained from that point forward. Should have been done a long tome ago for both FAT32 & NTFS as well as all other file systems which are intended for widespread use. It's just not something where you want to have a moving target, it basicaly needs to stay the same forever once it gets into widespread use. Important data is too important for any less than truly standard file sysstems.
- xvilka 6y ago
  NTFS would be a poor choice. This FS is very complex, undocumented, and without a good complete open source implementation (NTFS 3G is far from complete and wasn't updated for many years already).
  - fuzzfactor 6y ago
    At ASTM, overcoming those type of problems with complete consensus, then independently publishing and maintaining the resulting Standard Specification into the next century or beyond is just an everyday (everyyear actually) occurrence. That's exactly the reason for the existence of the Society to begin with. I would start by calling for action from an appropriate committee, submitting all available documentation from NTFS-3G plus from Paragon. Microsoft, and anyone else who has anything to offer that they would not like to become overlooked. Then hammer away in committee, especially with the full cooperation of Microsoft and all the great engineers who do have some rare expertise, it should be possible to publish like never before as an international ASTM Standard within a year, and maintain it from that point forward with all revisions rigorously reviewed and documented. After that engineers everywhere will have the technical reference material they have been lacking when they need to make sure their implementations of NTFS are as compatible with each other as they can be, even better allowing for absolute full compliance by all going forward.
moonchild 6y ago
ZFS is only 15 years old and continues to be improved (though granted, all of the real innovations have already happened). It works on (in order) Solaris, FreeBSD, Linux, MacOS, and Windows.
- dogma1138 6y ago
  ZFS is way too complex and finicky for these small scale applications.
- sneak 6y ago
  ZFS does not reliably work on macOS. If you think otherwise I encourage you to try: I have.
  - moonchild 6y ago
    Maybe not (there's a reason I put macos and windows last), but the fact remains that people have put effort into making it portable, and it shows: ZFS runs well on more OSes than most other (non-toy) FSes.

userbinator 6y ago

Closest may be ISO 9660 or UDF, although those are aimed more towards write-once/read-only media.

pwg 6y ago
UDF works fine with read/write media (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Disk_Format https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Disk_Format). I had several USB flash sticks that I formatted as UDF under Linux that I used to transfer files between Linux and W10. You get large files, long file names, and read/write compatibility on Linux and W10 with a UDF format USB stick.
- dogma1138 6y ago
  UDF doesn’t work that well for true R/W storage, it’s more suited for appendable or rewritable storage and from my experience the format is so bloody fragmented version wise that half the time when you format it on one OS you don’t know what will work on the other, sometimes the other would read it just fine but won’t be able to modify it without reformat in some cases modifying it makes it unreadable on other devices, it’s quite a mess...

cozzyd 6y ago

For microcontrollers, https://github.com/littlefs-project/littlefs https://github.com/littlefs-project/littlefs has some mindshare (although not sure how much there is outside the mbed world).