exFAT - New Flash File Format

Microsoft recently released info and specifications for a new flash file format called Extended File Allocation Table or exFAT. The main reason for the move to creating a new flash file format is that the current FAT file system has a maximum capacity of 32GBs. The exFAT can support far larger capacities - up to 256 terrabytes (or ~256,000 GBs). The exFAT file system will soon be showing up on high end SD cards allowing for the creation of higher capacity SD cards.

Personally I am not really a fan of those tables (say with iPods) that give you a theoretical maximum amount of songs or videos that you can fit onto different size versions of the iPod. However, in an attempt to show the usefulness of this new file format, I will be resorting to a similar scheme. One hour of decidedly high definition video (with high quality audio) can easily reach 6GBs in size. That would allow a 32GB SD card to hold about 5.2 hours of video and with upcoming advances in what we currently call HD, the amount of space one hour of video takes will only grow. I will spare you with anymore numbers as I am sure you can start to see that 32GB is not really that 'large' anymore.

Also, the largest file size that you can save in the FAT system is only 4GB, which at a very high HD setting can be as short as 14 minutes.

So when can I get myself a 1 TB SD card??? It'll be awile....