When you connect a new USB drive or external drive to a laptop, phone, or another storage-compatible device, it's mostly unusable until you format it. Formatting a drive helps prepare and set up the ...

I've made the long overdue decision to keep backups on an external USB drive, but should I go with NTFS or exFAT for the drive? We have an all Windows household here, and although I fiddle with Linux ...

Technically, it has never been a problem to format USB drives with a storage capacity of more than 32GB with the FAT32 file system. Only Windows itself has never been able to do this, so you always ...

Microsoft announced today that it supports the inclusion of its exFAT (Extended File Allocation Table) file system for USB flash drives and SD cards in the Linux kernel through the Open Invention ...

Microsoft has made its last remaining File Allocation Table (FAT) file system's intellectual property, the Extended FAT (exFAT) patents, available to Linux and open-source developers via the Open ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. I cover the exciting intersection of Linux and handheld gaming. Writing via Microsoft's Open Source Blog, Distinguished Engineer & ...