Mounting exFAT in FreeBSD

 

 

I'll tell you why exFAT, because even Windows users are more likely to use NTFS or FAT32. Yes, many will say why all this if there is Windows where it is unnecessary to even think about it, the system itself will mount and unmount the media. But using FreeBSD is also no big deal, as you’ll see for yourself.

Why exFAT?

 

A flash drive is usually formatted in FAT32 initially, but this file system is excellent suitable for a flash drive, but progress does not stand still and now the volume of flash drives is more and more. And what to do if we need to copy a file larger than 4 GB to a flash drive with the FAT32 file system. I've often noticed that people format their flash drives in NTFS for this purpose. But NTFS is a journaling file system, which does not work well on USB flash drives and leads to a decrease in the lifespan of the flash drive, and will take up more space after formatting.

 

But exFAT or FAT64 is an extended FAT and was designed specifically for flash drives. The file size limit in exFAT is 16 exabytes.

 

Let's install fusefs-exfat first, no matter from ports or package.

 

 

cd /usr/ports/sysutils/fusefs-exfat

 

 

make install clean

 

 

or

 

pkg install fusefs-exfat

 

 

In /etc/rc.conf we write

 

 

kld_list=''fuse''

 

 

Check

 

 

 

kldstat

 

 

 

1 0xffffffff821a9000 30aec0 zfs.ko

 

2 0xffffffff824bf000 9b748 linux.ko

 

1 0xffffffff82569000 e137c0 nvidia.ko

 

1 0xffffffff83438000 e567 fuse.ko

 

 

 

We see fuse.ko then everything is fine, if no do

 

 

kldload fuse

 

 

and check

 

kldstat

 

 

Now you can try to mount the USB flash drive, create any folder or simply mount in mnt.

 

 

mount.exfat-fuse /dev/da4s4/mnt

 

 

check the contents of the /mnt folder

 

 

ls /mnt

 

 

You will see the contents of the flash drive, to unmount the flash drive just run

 

umount /mnt