Sony engineers worked on greatly enhancing Microsoft's exFAT File System on Linux

Microsoft’s exFAT (Extended File Allocation Table) file system is receiving a significant performance upgrade on Linux, thanks to contributions from Sony engineers.

This marks another milestone in Microsoft’s collaboration with the open-source community, following the company’s decision to support exFAT on Linux in 2019.

The latest improvements focus on optimizing the exFAT file system’s performance, particularly in scenarios involving large files and extensive data operations. One notable enhancement is the introduction of batch processing for the “discard mount” option.

This feature informs storage devices about blocks no longer in use, enabling real-time discard operations. By discarding contiguous clusters in batches, the new optimization dramatically reduces the time required for file deletion (but you can always convert exFAT to FAT32). For example, deleting an 80 GB file now takes under 2 seconds, compared to nearly 5 minutes—a staggering 172-fold improvement.

Sony’s contributions also address random stack corruption, incorrect error returns, and endless loops in certain operations. These fixes enhance performance and improve the stability and reliability of the exFAT file system on Linux.

You can read more about it here.