How to mount ExFAT file system on Ubuntu or Linux Mint

exFAT (Extended File Allocation Table) is a proprietary file system designed especially for flash drives developed by Microsoft, which has applied for patent protection. It is supported in Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 with update KB955704, Windows Embedded CE 6.0, Windows Vista with Service Pack 1, Windows Server 2008, Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2 (except Windows Server 2008 Server Core), Mac OS X Snow Leopard starting from 10.6.5,[6] and Mac OS X Lion.
exFAT can be used where the NTFS file system is not a feasible solution, due to data structure overhead, or where the file size limit of the standard FAT32 file system (without FAT+ extension) is unacceptable.

via: Wikipedia
The exFAT file system is not supported natively on Linux because it is developed by Microsoft and it comes with restrictive license which doesn't allow open-source operating system to implement it natively.

Installation of ExFat process, open Terminal and enter commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:relan/exfat
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install fuse fuse-exfat exfat-utils

Once installed, plug your exFAT external hard drive in and run the following command to mount it:

sudo mkdir /media/exfat
sudo mount -t exfat /dev/sdb1 /media/exfat

If you want to unmount the drive, simply type the usual command below:

sudo umount /media/exfat

Enjoy

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exfat filesystem linux mount ubuntu

Umair

Bio: There is a lot information about Linux Geeks on the Internet.

6 comments to ''How to mount ExFAT file system on Ubuntu or Linux Mint"

KleydsonFebruary 16, 2013 at 6:08 PM
Thanks for the tip! Really easy and working on Mint 14.1!
t.g.May 27, 2013 at 11:08 PM
i'm on mint 12 I think and I'm getting the following error when trying to install

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Package fuse is not available, but is referred to by another package.
This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or
is only available from another source

E: Package 'fuse' has no installation candidate

adding the repo seemed to work correctly, but I don't have a lot of linux system experience so I may be wrong..
Michael H.July 8, 2013 at 6:08 PM
"apt-get install exfat-utils" did it for me to mount and use an 64GB sd-card. Thanks!
redkirkJanuary 26, 2014 at 5:22 AM
I keep getting errors when I try to unmount.

Example:

$ sudo umount exfat
umount: exfat: not mounted

or

umount: /media/exfat: device is busy.
(In some cases useful info about processes that use
the device is found by lsof(8) or fuser(1))
AxleMarch 8, 2014 at 4:14 PM
Tried the above procedure on Linux Mint 16.

On "sudo apt-get install fuse fuse-exfat exfat-utils", I got:

"Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies.
fuse-exfat : Depends: fuse-utils (>= 2.7) but it is not installable
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages."

Any suggestions?
thomasJuly 4, 2014 at 9:41 AM
thanks a lot