FATX or XFAT is a slightly modified version of the File Allocation Table filesystem, and is designed for Microsoft's Xbox video game console hard disk drive, used in an effort to reduce piracy. File Allocation Table (FAT) is a patented file system (patents apply to technology supporting Long File Names within the file system, but not the core file system itself) that was developed by Microsoft for MS-DOS and is the primary file system for consumer versions of Microsoft Windows up to... Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT, HKEx: 4338) is the worlds largest software corporation, with 2005 global annual sales of close to $40 billion USD and about 64,000 employees in 85 countries and regions. ... The Microsoft Xbox is a sixth generation era video game console first released on November 15, 2001 in North America and Puerto Rico, then released on February 22, 2002 in Japan, and on March 14, 2002 in Europe. ... A video game console is a dedicated electronic machine designed to play video games. ... Typical hard drives of the mid-1990s. ...

The Xbox also uses FATX on its memory cards, so to read them on a PC (or indeed write to them in a way an Xbox would understand) a special application must be used (the cards themselves connect to the console/PC via an XBOX controller, which is (electronically) USB; hardware-level connectivity is not a problem).

External links

• Xbox Partitioning and Filesystem Details - includes description of FATX partition header
• Differences between Xbox FATX and MS-DOS FAT - article from the Xbox-Linux project