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mk1024
Asked: 2018-08-30 10:59:46 +0800 CST

Can Ubuntu 18.04 read exFAT format by default?

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I have two partitions on my 1TB hard drive. The first one (about 550 GB) has Ubuntu 18.04 installed, and the other one (about 400 GB) has Windows 10.

sudo fdisk -l

gives me:

Device     Boot      Start        End    Sectors   Size Id Type
/dev/sda1  *          2048    1126399    1124352   549M  7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda2          1126400  820979711  819853312   391G  7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda3        820981758 1953523711 1132541954   540G  5 Extended
/dev/sda5        820981760 1937899728 1116917969 532,6G 83 Linux
/dev/sda6       1937901568 1953523711   15622144   7,5G 82 Linux swap / Solaris

So, that means in /dev/sda2 I have my Windows and it is in exFAT format.

Acording to: https://www.howtogeek.com/235596/whats-the-difference-between-fat32-exfat-and-ntfs/ I have to install additional packages to be able to read files from that (/dev/sda2) partition via Linux.

And, according to https://www.howtogeek.com/235655/how-to-mount-and-use-an-exfat-drive-on-linux/ I would have to install exfat-fuse and exfat-utils in order to access these files from Ubuntu. 

dpkg -l | grep fat

returns nothing so that means I haven't these packages installed on my Linux.

The question is: How is it possible I can read files from my Windows partition via Nautilus while I haven't these requested additional packages installed? Also, I don't realize why I can access and read it via Nautilus, but not from Terminal?

ls /dev/sda2

returns 

/dev/sda2: Not a directory
filesystem boot dual-boot partitioning mount

1 Answers

  1. First of all, you jump to the conclusion that it's exFAT. This is probably wrong. Windows supports exFAT, but for system partitions it uses NTFS. exFAT is designed for portable mediums, and does not support crucial features such as file ACLs. Installing a modern windows on exFAT is not possible, due to the lack of features.

    NTFS is supported in Ubuntu, by default, as far as I am aware.

    For the second part: the partition is /dev/sda2. This is the raw device, which needs to be mounted for you to access it. If it's accessible in Nautilus it's probably mounted. Type mount | grep sda2 to show where it's mounted. This will also show the file system. A typical line will be 

    /dev/sda2 on /mnt type ext4 (rw,relatime,data=ordered)

    where the file system type and mount point may vary.

    To manually mount a filesystem, have a look at this Q&A.

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