dump.exfat

Print on-disk information for a given filesystem

$ dump.exfat [/dev/sdXY]

dump.exfat [-hV] [-r] [-v] device

-h, --help
    print this help message and exit

-V, --version
    print version information and exit

-r, --raw
    dump raw bytes instead of decoded structures

-v, --verbose
    increase verbosity of output

dump.exfat is a diagnostic utility from the exfatprogs package designed to extract and display detailed information about an exFAT (Extended File Allocation Table) filesystem on a block device or disk image. exFAT is a Microsoft-developed filesystem optimized for flash storage like USB drives and SD cards, supporting large files and partitions beyond FAT32 limits.

This read-only tool inspects key structures including the boot sector, volume boot record (VBR), volume flags, allocation bitmap, upcase table, and root directory entries. It outputs parameters such as volume serial number, sector size, cluster size, total clusters, FAT and root directory positions, and volume label in a human-readable, decoded format by default.

Ideal for debugging mount issues, verifying filesystem integrity before repairs with fsck.exfat, or analyzing disk images for forensics. With -r, it provides raw hexadecimal dumps for low-level examination. Verbose mode (-v) adds more details on entries and chains.

Requires read access to the device, typically via sudo. It does not alter data but assumes a valid exFAT signature. Output is to stdout, suitable for piping to files or less.

Example use: sudo dump.exfat /dev/sdb1 reveals the full volume layout without mounting.

Requires root or read permissions on block devices; may fail on corrupted or non-exFAT volumes; limited support for advanced exFAT features like checksums.

Volume serial: 0x12345678
Sector size: 512
Cluster size: 4096
FAT offset: 32 KiB
Rootdir cluster: 2
Label: MYUSB

Install via apt install exfatprogs (Debian/Ubuntu) or dnf install exfatprogs (Fedora); replaces older exfat-utils.

Introduced in exfatprogs (successor to exfat-utils around 2019), coinciding with Linux kernel 5.4 native exFAT support. Developed by Samsung (Namjae Jeon et al.) for robust user-space tools.

fsck.exfat(8), mkfs.exfat(8), exfatlabel(8), mount(8)