Can you install Mac OS X on an ExFat formatted disk?

Question

I'm installing Mtn Lion and I'm wondering what will happen if I format my disk as ExFat and install Mountain Lion on it that way.

Any major advantages or disadvantages to doing this?

Solution

Nope, OS X can only boot from Mac OS Extended (aka HFS+) and its variants (journaled, encrypted, and/or case sensitive). I don't have anything to test with here, but I'd be amazed if the installer even let you try installing it on ExFAT.

BTW, this isn't just a matter of "Apple hasn't bothered to support it"; OS X depends strongly on the Posix file permissions model, and ExFAT doesn't support that (just ACL permissions). It would take a lot of work to make OS X work on a volume where you can't have setuid files.

Comments

[Ramhound]

If you are already doing a format just try it

[bobobobo]

Well the install takes an hour, if this is a bad idea (down the road) I'd like to know!

[wp78de]

Correct, It would take a lot of work to make OS X work on a file systems set do not support POSIX file permissions, resource forks and other proprietary file system features of HFS(+).