TrueNAS support for exFAT

[Melodious Funk]

As a leading (certainly full performance) NAS OS, I cannot understand why exFAT is still not supported.

The question has been asked repeatedly for over 8 years. And I have yet to see a good reason why exFAT isn't natively supported (for import only), and when it might be.

Is there a legal issue regarding implementing exFAT in the base TrueNAS kernel? Certainly other distros have shown it can be.

In researching various forums I understand:

1. ZFS is a superior file system, exFAT lacks journaling, etc., etc., etc.. Not an answer...just poo, pooing exFAT.

2. There are many suggested workarounds of spinning up VM in jail, mount usb drive and watch out for this error or that error. Most are suggestions on how it might be done. But not very many advising this is how it IS done, reliably and repeatedly.

3. That I can mount my USB drive to another system and move data over the network. Yes easy to do but slow when my new NAS box is decked out with high speed USB ports. (Like nipples on a boar hog)

I cannot imagine I'm the only person who has collected media/data for years on external USB drives and wants to transition to a reliable, cost effective NAS and dump all my media into this NAS without having to do so over the network. This has to be a desired capability for a large majority of new TrueNAS Core users.

Something that has been asked for so many times....hasn't yet bubbled up in the developers new feature queue?

Other than this monumental gripe, I am very impressed with TrueNAS core, and continue to be as I uncover additional features.

Tx,

Melodious
TrueNAS Newbie.

 

[Ericloewe]

The import data functionality is an absolute afterthought, unashamedly so. Expect zero effort to improve limitations from upstream, be it Debian for Scale or FreeBSD for Core.

Since exFAT is mostly a thing on smallish flash media, whereas external hard drives are typically formatted with NTFS, I suspect there just isn't enough interest in this.

 

[Melodious Funk]

Ericloewe,​

Thanks for the response. I have to disagree with your last comment. Yes, while exFAT is common on flash media, it's also the primary format on most recent large capacity USB drives due to support for both Windows and MacOS.

I have a stack of 2-5TB and now 12TB external drives, all exFAT (as purchased). Hence my desire to import. Not necessarily a key feature for Scale or Enterprise, but based on how many times it's been asked, it's got to be a feature for Core that would be simple to implement and well received by those dipping their toe in the NAS pool. Your new Core user testing it out and having a good experience may be your next Scale/Enterprise licensee.

I didn't realize the import feature was such an afterthought. I mean serving multi-OS clients is great. But getting bulk data in to serve seems to be a worthy consideration. Most folks don't start with a NAS. They accumulate data (and perhaps lose a bit)... to the point that NAS becomes a natural growth step.

Tx again,

 

[Ericloewe]

I guess it boils down to it not paying bills. Nobody really migrates to TrueNAS because importing their old data is especially easy (that's always the last thing people think about before migrating) and enterprise customers really don't care.

 

[rvassar]

Also... exFAT had intellectual property issues until 2019. I think M$ released the spec & patents, so it's at least possible now. Prior to 2019 it was unsupportable because you'd get sued.