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⇱ Upcoming exFAT Linux Driver Patch Can Boost Sequential Read Performance By ~10% - Phoronix


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Upcoming exFAT Linux Driver Patch Can Boost Sequential Read Performance By ~10%

Written by Michael Larabel in Linux Storage on 16 January 2026 at 08:44 PM EST. 7 Comments
A patch for the open-source exFAT file-system driver for Linux can boost the sequential read performance by about 10% in preliminary tests.

There is a patch queued up into the exFAT driver's "dev" branch to support multi-cluster for the exfat_get_cluster code. Developer Chi Zhiling of China's Kylin OS worked on the patch and explained in the commit:
"This patch introduces a count parameter to exfat_get_cluster, which serves as an input parameter for the caller to specify the desired number of clusters, and as an output parameter to store the length of consecutive clusters.

This patch can improve read performance by reducing the number of get_block calls in sequential read scenarios. speacially in small
cluster size.

According to my test data, the performance improvement is approximately 10% when read FAT_CHAIN file with 512 bytes of cluster size.

454 MB/s -> 511 MB/s"

With the patch now part of exFAT's dev branch, it's possible we will see this exFAT read performance improvement merged for the upcoming Linux 6.20~7.0 merge window. This is just one of several great performance optimizations observed in recent times for this exFAT adaptation for Linux.

Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.