ExFat filesystem for Win 9x/ME

[sp193]

It is NOT impossible! Why you do not ask Xeno? He will tell you, it is possible. Maybe some people don't want to make Exfat for Win98 and want to close this topic from this reason.

I felt that I should add something here - Although it's possible to modify/replace/add APIs to system files... changing certain system APIs are only grounds for LOTS of trouble.

Programs that don't expect Windows 9x to do certain things may break when Windows 9x gives them a different result/or if certain "missing" system calls are now present. Look at what happened when Xeno and some other developers had initially attempted to add unicode support to Windows 98 - certain programs that don't expect Windows 98 to support unicode broke (My Chinese IME was one of them - and still is).

Edited June 11, 2010 by sp193

[erpdude8]

looks like so far, nobody has been able to make an exfat driver for win9x/me, not even a read-only driver. tough luck on that one.

however, there is a possible DOS driver that may read exfat formatted volumes.

check it out here:

http://www.bttr-software.de/forum/mix_entry.php?id=7861

[MDGx]

looks like so far, nobody has been able to make an exfat driver for win9x/me, not even a read-only driver. tough luck on that one.

however, there is a possible DOS driver that may read exfat formatted volumes.

check it out here:

http://www.bttr-software.de/forum/mix_entry.php?id=7861

Thanks for the find.

Looks like we still have hopes, maybe 1 day exFAT will be available to 9x OSes. [native driver... any1?]

I've added the links here:

http://www.mdgx.com/drv.htm#LKU

and here:

http://www.mdgx.com/secrets.htm#NEW

HTH

[writtenmania]

https://www.sans.org/reading-room/whitepapers/forensics/reverse-engineering-microsoft-exfat-file-system-33274

http://www.heise.de/download/h2format.html

 

[ZaPbUzZ]

I got a tool once it allowed NTFS to read but not write. For example I played an 8.5 gb movie iso from an ntfs partition it worked flawlessly.

but couldn't copy it to fat32 nor write it to ntfs as 8.5gb.

No matter what, anything can read on windows 98se or any dos windows but its hard coded to only allow writing of 4gb files.

I havent come across a disc image writer that splits massive files down to fat32 parts set yet anyone know one?

Everyome instead were obsessing over squeezing dvd's down to cdroms that blank dvd's used to be more expensive and disk space was a premium.

Once upon a time exfat had fat32 backwards copatability mode but it was revised. It allowed dos windows to boot but not store data over 4gb. It was revised as a security risk. Also other consumer electronics malfunctioned trying to access the old exfat as fat32 which had over 4gb data files on the file system. You'd be hard pressed obtaining that patch for windows xp32. still you can read those massive files but cannot write them in a dos windows enviroment.

Edited March 16, 2020 by ZaPbUzZ

[Goodmaneuver]

Paragon partition manager 6 has got exFat. Paragon NTFS for 98 will work with NTFS and FILE64 by Rudoph Loew will work for files greater than 4GB. These programs should be free.

[ZaPbUzZ]

the very first release of exfat on windows xp allowed backwards compatibility with fat32 systems. 

It had since been revised to stop backwards compatibility mostly doe to BIOS bugs but also security concerns.

I assure that bug is still there regardless trying to boot a pc with NTFS with an additional 8TB exfat disk as storage (even usb) on board can freeze the pc and make cpu red hot.

Backwards compatibility actually made exfat behave like fat32 on dos windows and files over 4gb could be read but not written.

You could even boot dos windows on that exfat disk as long as the disk itself was compatible with computer bios.

Attempting to modify or delete such files over 4gb caused issues. Scan disk didn't like the file sizes and defrag couldn't be used as well.

The very first windows xp patch i believe was either designed for sp1 or sp2. Track that down make a vm of windows xp create an exfat disk and try it out on dos windows vm.

Patching xp sp3 with the firat exfat installation patch seems to be impossible like its coded to reject it even though i don't think exfat was in sp3? someone confirm plz?

So therefore like 3rd party utilities you can read your files over 4tb but that's all. Everything dos windows size compliant can be written and read on it however and taking the exfat disk and defragging it on windows xp was by far a superior strategy than dos windows.

Good luck finding the very first install patch of exfat on xp windows. If you do share it put it on archive dot org its a true piece of history needing preservation not cover up (like original virtual pc 2004 with  real disk access sp1 took away and left only virtual disk crap)

Edited December 20, 2020 by ZaPbUzZ

[jaclaz]

The first release was for XP SP2 and SP3:

https://web.archive.org/web/20090202073512/http://support.microsoft.com/kb/955704

The filename is WindowsXP-KB955704-x86-ENU.exe.

I would try looking here:

https://web.archive.org/web/20130301000000*/https://download.microsoft.com/download/A/6/E/A6EFFC03-F035-4604-9FB0-3B8169ED6BB6/WindowsXP-KB955704-x86-ENU.exe

Before that, there was an unofficial way:

https://web.archive.org/web/20100628180626/http://www.merawindows.com/Forums/tabid/324/forumid/15/postid/35485/scope/posts/Default.aspx

 

Files  exfat.sys and uexfat.dll are version 6.0.6001.18000 (longhorn_rtm.080118-1840).

jaclaz

[tyukok]

Looks like it's already up on archive.org:

https://archive.org/details/windows-xp-kb-955704-x-86-nld