I live, work and play in a world of flexible computing, multiple OS platforms, modern media players and downloadable video content. All of these mean I also live in file system hell.

For as long as I can remember, there has only been a single file system that will reliably allow for interoperability between different operating systems, media players and systems. That file system is the now antiquated FAT family (most recently FAT 32).

FAT32 has a couple of serious limitations and a couple more serious problems that render it entirely unsuitable for continued everyday use:

• File size limited to 4GB – this is a biggy. When FAT was conceived back in the distant annuls, the idea of regular files that exceeded 4GB was unthinkable. Nowadays, with a DVD worth of data clocking in at 4.7GB, Blu Rau and HD video formats becoming prevalent, and many games / programs shipping on media that slams the 4GB cap to the mat, this limitation is the biggest block to usage of FAT32 as a general purpose file system
• No journaling and poor error recovery – NTFS, Ext 3 and above, HFS+ – almost every other file system out there has the option to journal data to ensure that, should the drive be taken offline unexpectedly, the disk can be rolled back or recovered to a usable state. FAT has no such option and, as such, is prone to corruption and presents a significant risk of data loss if used long term
• FAT fragments like you wouldn’t believe – one of the joys of running a non Microsoft OS is the lack of defrags. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll occasionally defrag my Mac … once a year. FAT (and it’s slightly less useless brother NTFS) lack features preventing file fragmentation and the use of larger block sizes mean massive amounts of disk waste as volume use increases.
• FAT is patented to a single company – Scary thought! Should MS decide to not play nicely with the rest of the world there is a good chance of them suing a lot of people for patent infringement and effectively crippling manufacturers of storage devices across the board.

Despite all of these problems, FAT is probably the most widespread file system in the world (in terms of devices if not formatted storage). Got an MP3 player? Probably FAT. Digital camera? FAT. Xbox? FAT all the way baby!

So what is to be done about this shocking state of affairs? I for one would suggest it’s time to find a viable replacement for FAT.

I already have a contender – EXT3. This file system is entirely open source (no patent worries), journaled, does not require that the device accessing the media knows how to journal (ext2 and ext3 are almost interchangeable in that regard), drivers already exist for Apple and Windows and the filesystem implementation is lightweight and efficient.

Yes it is true that this is a “Linux” file system but that in itself is the joy of having used across the board. Linux is open, free as in speech. So is the filesystem that runs it.

So what do you think? Would you be happy to move to a more reliable FS if it were to reach the mainstream? And how the hell do we go about pulling this off?