Transaction-Safe FAT File System (TFAT) and Transaction-Safe Extended FAT File System (TexFAT) refer to two file systems used in

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

products to provide transaction-safety for data stored on a disk. The goal is to reduce the risk of data loss in cases of power loss or unexpected removal of the drive. The latter problem has become more common with the spread of

USB Universal Serial Bus (USB) is an industry standard, developed by USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF), for digital data transmission and power delivery between many types of electronics. It specifies the architecture, in particular the physical ...

drives.

TFAT

The ''Transaction-Safe FAT File System'' (TFAT) of the TFAT12, TFAT16 and TFAT32 file systems is a driver layer modification to the original

FAT In nutrition science, nutrition, biology, and chemistry, fat usually means any ester of fatty acids, or a mixture of such chemical compound, compounds, most commonly those that occur in living beings or in food. The term often refers specif ...

file systems

FAT12 File Allocation Table (FAT) is a file system developed for personal computers and was the default file system for the MS-DOS and Windows 9x operating systems. Originally developed in 1977 for use on floppy disks, it was adapted for use on ...

FAT16 File Allocation Table (FAT) is a file system developed for personal computers and was the default file system for the MS-DOS and Windows 9x operating systems. Originally developed in 1977 for use on floppy disks, it was adapted for use on Ha ...

and

FAT32 File Allocation Table (FAT) is a file system developed for personal computers and was the default file system for the MS-DOS and Windows 9x operating systems. Originally developed in 1977 for use on floppy disks, it was adapted for use on ...

maintaining two copies (FAT 0 and FAT 1) of the file allocation table instead of two identical ones. While performing a drive operation, changes would be made to FAT 1. When the operation is complete, the FAT 1 table would be copied to FAT 0, updating the stable view of the file system.

TexFAT

The ''Transaction-Safe Extended FAT File System'' (TexFAT), TexFAT provides similar functionality to TFAT using the

exFAT exFAT (Extensible File Allocation Table) is a file system optimized for flash memory such as USB flash drives and SD cards, that was introduced by Microsoft in 2006. exFAT was proprietary until 28 August 2019, when Microsoft published its spe ...

file system as the base file system instead of FAT. Introduced with

Windows Embedded CE 6.0 Windows Embedded CE 6.0 (codenamed "''Yamazaki''") is the sixth major release of the Microsoft Windows embedded operating system targeted to enterprise-specific tools such as industrial controllers and consumer electronics devices like digital ...

, it is sometimes referred to as ''TFAT'' as well, which can lead to confusion with the original TFAT described above. The use of exFAT as the underlying file system allows for larger files and larger partitions. TexFAT requires a hardware-specific driver designed for the type of media on which the TexFAT volume resides. TexFAT is not supported by desktop/server versions of Windows.

Limitations

Due to the lack of support in desktop

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...

s, neither TFAT nor TexFAT are recommended for removable media. While the desktop OS could still read the drive, it could not use the transaction-safe features, so unexpected removal or a power outage could lead to data loss. In addition, directories created under the desktop OS may not be transaction-safe even if the drive is later attached to a TFAT/TexFAT aware operating system.

TFAT

TexFAT

Limitations

See also

References

Further reading