UPDATE Jan. 4, 2024. On macOS Sonoma 14.2.1, I can format and access ExFAT-formatted SSDs and thumb drives. Hopefully, this means Apple has fixed this problem.
Mary Peterson sent me the following caution:
“Had a couple exFAT formatted drives (in case I had to share with PC client). But Sonoma is unable to mount those drives. Lots of discussion in Apple Community forums on the issue. Ended up using EaseUS software which could see into the drives and let me copy them. Some files were corrupted but was able to copy all my video clips and more. Am now making sure drives are formatted APFS. And I bought lots of cheapish external drives so I can keep 3 copies of critical files! I should have known better…”
In researching this, it appears that there are issues with ExFAT in Sonoma. Here’s a link to Apple Discussions on this topic.
Apple’s Sonoma Release Notes state:
“The implementations of the exfat and msdos file systems on macOS have changed; these file systems are now provided by services running in user-space instead of by kernel extensions. If the application has explicit checks or support for either the ExFAT or MS-DOS file systems, validate the applications with those file systems and report any issues.”
In other words, there were issues, but these may now be fixed. Maybe.
If you have critical data stored on ExFAT drives, BE SURE to copy it to a non-ExFAT volume before upgrading. It is better to be safe than sorry.
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23 Responses to Caution: macOS Sonoma May Not Support ExFAT
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Larry says:
April 13, 2024 at 6:40 am
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Noel Cosgrave says:
May 23, 2024 at 6:06 am
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Larry Jordan says:
May 23, 2024 at 6:10 am
← Older CommentsEd:
Interesting. I haven’t tried this, but partitioning a drive with one side HFS+ (or APFS if it is an SSD) and the other ExFAT should enable the ExFAT version to be read on Windows.
Try it and let me know what happens.
Larry
Sonoma 14.4.1 just borked my exFAT-formatted SDXC card, so the problem has not gone away, and it doesn’t only impact on transfers between Windows and MacOS, but also loading images and video from digital cameras, where the exFAT format is the de-facto standard.
Noel:
Sigh… I’m very sorry to read this. It is incredibly frustrating. macOS Sonoma 14.4.1 has lots of problems. However, I regularly use Sonoma 14.3.1 and 14.5 to work with EXFAT cards from DSLR cameras and have not had problems.
I’m hoping that your problem can be remedied by upgrading to version 14.5, which was released last week.
Larry