The 32GB-limit - no Fat-X on Linux - SD / XQD-Cards and the future

Software
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I am NOT YET concerned, but I hear the mortars approaching. Owner of a 24MP DSLR, I get along quite well with my bunch of 32GB SD-Cards. I can shoot more than 1000 photos before the card is full, so four cards (two in the camera, two for backup) can get me through most situations.

32GB is a bit weak when it comes to 4K-Video. 64MB (or even 256) would be better, but that can’t be done, because you can’t format anything beyond 32GB with Fat32 (still the #1 format in any camera). You need Fat-X - a proprietary format by MS and licensed to about any camera-maker and Apple, but not available in Linux because “who pays the license in an Open-Source World?”

You might take the debian approach and simply say “if it’s proprietary it’s evil and I won’t use it” but ideology doesn’t solve my problem and I am not a debian-disciple for exactly that reason. My next camera will probably not work very well with small cards; a Nikon D850 for example produces RAW-files of 70GB a piece - seven of them per second, if it comes to that. So 64 or 128 GB XQD cards are in my future. How will I be able to work with them? Format? Read?

Any solution in sight?

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Maybe ExFAT?

For example, Sandisk ships their 256 GB CF cards as exFAT.

There is a Debian driver for exfat and has been for a while :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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That’s good news, thanxalot - I’ll check, if I can make it happen on my system.

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In Ubuntu:
sudo apt-get install exfat-fuse exfat-utils

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That is a very large sensor :slight_smile: … 70MB each, perchance? :wink:

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Yup - just short of 50MP. RAW-files are 50MB in 12 bit and 70MB in 14 bit color-depth. I’m not in the market for a new camera, but things may change in six months or six years. Today I really hate the fact that the batteries in my helmet-cam live longer than the Micro-SD card.

My photography isn’t very gear-oriented (I do own an alarming arsenal of lenses, though). My ten best pictures have all been shot with a standard 50mm lens at mid ISO settings. Nothing too fancy …

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My photography is very gear oriented - and I only make extensive use of 1 lens.