Which of the following filesystems will the technician MOST likely use?

A technician needs to formal a USB drive to transfer 20GB of data from a Linux computer to a Windows computer.

Which of the following filesystems will the technician MOST likely use?

A. FAT32

B. ext4

C. NTFS

D. exFAT

View Answer

Answer: D

Explanation:

A. FAT32 – This is not a suitable choice because the FAT32 file system has a maximum file size limit of 4GB. Therefore, it cannot handle a single file that is 20GB in size.

B. ext4 – This is a Linux-specific file system. While there are ways to read ext4 file systems from Windows, it’s not natively supported and would require extra software. It’s not the most straightforward choice for transferring data from Linux to Windows.

C. NTFS – While NTFS does not have the file size limitation of FAT32 and is natively read by Windows, it is not fully supported by all Linux distributions. Some can read from NTFS partitions but cannot write to them, making it an unlikely choice for transferring data from a Linux system.

D. exFAT – This is the best choice. exFAT is a file system that is compatible with both Linux and Windows, and it does not have the 4GB file size limit of FAT32. It is designed to be a lightweight file system like FAT32 but without the size restrictions and with improved file transfer speeds. Hence, the technician will most likely use exFAT to format the USB drive for the data transfer.