Ubuntu Mount Error: unknown filesystem type 'exfat'

Problem mounting exFAT disk on Ubuntu;How to mount exFAT drive on Ubuntu Linux;How to solve disk mount error in Ubuntu#

Ubuntu Mount Error: unknown filesystem type 'exfat'

The other day, I tried to use an external USB key formatted in exFAT format that contained a file of around 10 GB in size. As soon as I plugged the USB key, my Ubuntu 16.04 throw an error complaining that it cannot mount unknown filesystem type ‘exfat’.

Reason:

The reason behind this exFAT mount error is, Microsoft’s favorite FAT file system is limited to files up to 4GB in size. You cannot transfer a file bigger than 4 GB in size to a FAT drive. To overcome the limitations of the FAT filesystem, Microsoft introduced exFAT file system in 2006.

As most of the Microsoft related stuff are proprietary, exFAT file format is no exception to that. Ubuntu and many other Linux distributions don’t provide the proprietary exFAT file support by default. This is the reason why you see the mount error with exFAT files.

Solution:
The solution to this problem is simple. All you need to do is to enable exFAT support.

Installing the below packages only will auto-mounts your exFAT formatted drives ,

sudo apt-get install exfat-fuse exfat-utils

Once you have installed these packages, go to file manager and click on the USB disk again to mount it. There is no need to replug the USB. It should be mounted straightaway.