Access Vista and Windows 7 exFAT Drives in XP
Windows Vista and Windows 7 come with a new file system type called exFAT. It is an updated version of the FAT file system and carries a lot of new features and improvements – which most people won’t care about at the moment so follow the link for the gory details. That’s a good thing, but one problem is that Windows XP can’t read it!
So, if a friend of yours formats a USB stick using exFAT on Vista and copies some docs to it for you and brings it over to your XP computer you won’t be able to get the files. Well, luckily, Microsoft has released a download that will help you get around this issue. Just go to this KB955704 article and you can download and install the update.
Now you can handle exFAT formated media from your Windows XP machine.
If you are running Linux or OS X – you are out of luck. Linux and OS X users are used to this though and tend to have their own ways around these issues – but still something to keep in mind.
