Talk:Universal Disk Format

message: The OS support page really needs an update to reflect current state. It also needs to be reformatted to clearly state if an OS can *read* or *write* it. For example the (dated) Linux entry claims non plain VAT support, but can the kernel write it or only read it? Same for the other OSes. Also missing file system checker support shipped with the OS. Only OS I currently know has a good one is Windows7+ IIRC.
I haven't done the reformatting yet since I don't know the state of all the OSes and can't just test them out.
Reinoud (talk) 16:24, 28 November 2021 (UTC)
thread_title: Revamp and update 2021

message: Link to Toshiba UDF2.5 Reader
http://www.csd.toshiba.com/cgi-bin/tais/support/jsp/download.jsp?soid=1476333
WHY CAN I NOT LOGIN INTO THE ENGLISH WIKIPEDIA, EVEN I HAVE A USER IN THE GERMAN WIKIPEDIA?
This is me.
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:Walter_H.   — Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.48.32.17 (talk) 08:42, 13 December 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Untitled

message: I've recently come to the conclusion that, perhaps, type is not the best word to substitute for flavour. I suggest the term "build" in their steads. I believe it conveys technicality, is accurate than both, and is an officially used term througout the industry for many different technologies. As updated versions of the standard are styled "revisions", there is also no confusion between the two.
GuelphGryphon98 (talk) 16:58, 5 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  A new substitue for "flavour" 

message: UDF is not ice cream, it doesn't come in "flavours", so don't use that word. It's unprofessional, and silly. It brings down the tone of the whole article, making it look amateurish and juvenile. This is a universal resource, and its reputation is in part based upon the carefully chosen verbiage of those who contribute articles, so try your best to make use of more technical words when discussing a technical subject, otherwise the article looks ridiculous and Wikipedia's reputation is tarnished.
GuelphGryphon98 (talk) 19:38, 14 July 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I believe *flavour* is a common word for variant or subtype in the CS jargon, most notably when referring to one or more "Unix flavour". For similar usage in a different academic field, see Flavour (particle physics). Eroen (talk) 00:49, 11 March 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Types, not flavours 

message: I personally don't like the way the history is written, as it's inaccurate and not in readable text. May I propose something along the lines of:
::The UDF filesystem was standardized by the Optical Storage Technology Association to form a common file system for all optical media, be it read-only or having (limited) re-writing capabilities. This is still the main goal for ongoing UDF standardisation, although support for the more obscure WORM media is about to be limited, and support for non-optical media may be added.
::
::When it was first standardised, the UDF filesystem was intended to replace ISO9660, allowing support for both read-only and writable media. Almost directly after the first version of UDF was released, it was adopted by the DVD Consortium as the official filesystem for DVD Video and DVD Audio. Nowadays, a UDF file system may be found on most authored optical discs in the market, and on almost all recordable DVD media that are used for video recording.
::
::As intended, initially UDF was mainly found on optical media. Most operating systems needed special third-party software to support reading it. Nowadays, almost all operating systems natively support at least reading UDF file systems, and many support some form of writing as well. Because of this increased support, UDF is gaining popularity on non-optical media that mainly need to be exchangable, such as Iomega REV discs, large flash media, and even on hard disk drives.
I am intentionally dropping the information here about 2TB limit (which is incorrect by the way), the 32GB limit for FAT32 (untrue), the resource fork mention (not relevant to history), and the incomplete lists of supported media (inaccurate and not relevant to history).
Any information that goes missing because of this should be included (in text) elsewhere in the article.
I'd appreciate some feedback on this.
Pieter-Bas 15:45, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  History 

message: What is the correct GPT or MBR identifier for UDF hard disk partitions? Chithanh 08:01, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Pali UDF (talk) 09:10, 9 September 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  UDF partition identifier 

message: Which UDF version do you suggest?
I think, 2.01 for cdrw.
Windows XP Pro SP2, LG GSA-4136B
The article says right now:
Lately, however, it has also become popular with large and fully rewritable cross-platform media such as:
* Flash media above the Microsoft FAT32 (Windows XP) limit of 32 GB per disc
According to the article File Allocation Table, FAT32 has a limit of 2 TiB, so the above statement is wrong in my eyes.
--Abdull 20:52, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, but Microsoft has deliberately crippled the disk formatting tool in recent version of Windows. Basically, they want people to use NTFS, which is still not well supported by other operating systems e.g Linux, Mac OS X, and the BSD's. By limiting the size of FAT32 filesystems they provide a seemingly plausable reason to migrate. More subtle than simply dropping support outright. Imroy 07:00, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The limit you mentioned only applies to formatting and installation, Windows 8 can still read or write 2 TiB FAT32 partitions.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.57.10.129 (talk) 09:10, 31 January 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  InCD 

message: Is discontrinued IBM OS/2 an example of OLD operating system? I bet it is.
Is Windows  (XP/2o03/forecoming Vista) example of New operating system ? I bet it is.
But Windows cannot write to UDF without 3rd-party apps, while OS/2 can.
So splitting Operating systems to old and new is quite strange and confusing in this article.
:Wait a minute, WHAT OS/2 can write to UDF without 3rd-party?
:As far as I remember people in my local OS/2 user group must use 3rd-party to write UDF...
:Can you provide proofs?
:—Claunia 15:37, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  what is Old and New Operating systems ? 

message: http://www.download.com/Adaptec-UDF-Reader-Driver/3000-2100_4-9497911.html
: Doesn't work for Windows 95. Maybe it only supports a specific version of UDF i.e. those burned using Adaptec's packet writing DirectCD. --Voidvector (talk) 07:47, 24 September 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  UDF Reader For Legacy OS 

message: Can somebody write this page? The DVD+VR one? There is not one thing on it and all the links to such a page go to an editing page.--Nytemunkey 06:45, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Done. Please check the DVD+VR page. I added a talk page with information of which I know it's missing. Pieter-Bas 15:39, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  DVD+VR 

message: The article claims a 32Gb limit on FAT32 under Windows XP.  The size limit for FAT32 is much larger than this.  The only issue with Windows XP is that it will not format any device (or partition if appropriate) larger than 32Gb.  However, larger than 32Gb devices otherwise work perfectly with XP.
Could it be referencing the 4GB single file size limitation of FAT32? 24.14.61.102 05:13, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  32 Gb limit on FAT32? 

message: Since hardly any one had paid attention to the "flavors", I have added a note that states that by default, OSs do not support the VAT and Spared flavors but only the "plain" flavor.
Yet, some OS seems to support the flavors, some even in writing. E.g, Windows Vista supposedly supports VAT and Spared flavors even in writing. Can someone please verify this by writing both to a CD-R and a CD-RW in packet writing mode and then update the table accordingly? Please do not blindly believe it unless you have tested it. If in doubt, ask me - I have a lot of practical knowledge of UDF and packet writing and can help.
Thank you -- Tempel 08:06, 12 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Please update "write" capabilities in the table 

message: This is wrong: the original format is read only partition as in UDF 1.0x. Rewritable partitions came only with UDF 1.50.
: Nope. UDF 1.02 is actually also intended to write, hence the 'reading' and 'writing' hints in the specification. As for partition types: The older UDF specifications didn't repeat anything that was not restricted or refined from ECMA167-2. Also, additional partition types (VAT and Sparable partitions) were introduced in UDF 1.50 to enable random access writing on packet-written media that are otherwise not randonly overwritable, such as CD-R and CD-RW. Pieter-Bas 15:46, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Plain (Random Read/Write Access). This is the original format supported in all UDF revisions  

message: Stock Linux 2.6 kernels do not support UDF 2.50 at all, see http://linux-udf.cvs.sourceforge.net/linux-udf/udf/linux-2.6/udf_sb.h?revision=1.8&view=markup#l_7
There is a patch for read-only support floating around, but it has not been accepted yet (http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=1476807&group_id=295&atid=300295). —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 68.126.150.3 (talk) 02:29, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  UDF 2.50 on Linux 

message: How does UDF store file names?  Does it use Unicode?  Shouldn't the fact it does or not be mentioned in the article?--Saoshyant talk / contribs (I don't like Wikipedophiles) 14:41, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Unicode? 

message: Ubuntu belongs to Linux 2.6.x operating systems. Or does it have some own implentation? If not, it should be removed or other distributions should be added (wich doesn't make sense imho). Sevcsik 10:19, 21 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Ubuntu is Linux and as far as I know supports UDF like every other Linux distribution does.--Ivo Emanuel Gonçalves talk / contribs (please join WP:PT or WP:SPOKEN) 22:20, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ubuntu? 

message: I am talking about the default formating choice for discs under Windows Vista. Apparently it is some sort of UDF. But what exactly is it? Microsoft describes it as "packet writing" UDF. Is that Microsoft speak for "VAT" or "Spared"? Or is it something else? I have heard that it is not well supported, which fits those two flavors. If it is one of those two I congratulate Microsoft for actually using a standard, and in the way it was intended, but regret the limited compatibility of the resulting discs due to the limited implementation of those flavor in other OSes. Tacvek 03:30, 8 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Packet writing UDF is either VAT or Spared. The only way to write to DVD-RW, DVD+RW, DVD-R or DVD+R media using UDF (in such a way the media are re-writable) is using Packet Writing technology on physical level, and using UDF+VAT (DVD+R/DVD-R), UDF+Sparing (DVD-RW/DVD+RW), or plain UDF (DVD-RAM). So, I think MS is actually following the standard. I didn't check this though. As for limited support on other OSs: The standard is open, and I don't see any reason why the open source community can't come up with a working UDF implementation for packet-written media. Pieter-Bas 15:52, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Vista's "Live File System" 

message: I am the one who introduced the term "flavor" a while ago here in order to add awareness of the VAT and Spared types of UDF.
No one seemed to have a problem with this, and I noticed that others adopted this term as well in recent years.
Now someone anonymously changed the article by replacing "flavor" with "version", which, IMO, is a bad choice as it adds confusion (imagine saying: a hard disk is usually written in the "plain version" of UDF). Therefore, I changed it back to "flavor".
Is there a consensus that we keep using "flavor" here?
Does anyone inside the OSTA UDF group know what term is used there now? Pieter-Bas, what you do think?
Tempel 10:27, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I have given this some thought. I think flavor is awkward, but version is definitely not the right word. We use "UDF version" for the the version number of the specification, not for the specific type of volume that is being recorded. By lack of a better word, flavor is good to use. Pieter-Bas 06:24, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

text: If Wikipedia wishes to be a universal and professional resource, its contributors ought to stop doing certain things, particularly the use and creation of what amount to slang terms ad hoc. The purpose of Wikipedia, as I see it, is to ultimately acheive the same academic quality and consistency of such encyclopaedias as Brittanica, and in this endeavour the proper choice of language is essential, the proper choice of professional and academic language specifically. When discussing a technical subject, more technical or neutral words are called for. As Winston Churchill said, to improve is to change, to be perfect is to change often. Confusion wrought by change will in time turn to clarity, as long as there is consistency, this should not something to fear. In substitue of "flavour", I would suggest "variety", "type", or "build". Of these I prefer "build", as it is easily understood, conveys technicality, and is already in official use in many technical areas, and isn't a slang term.
GuelphGryphon98 (talk) 16:49, 5 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: "Flavor" is actually a relatively common term in some software circles. In BSD for example, the different distributions/types/what-have-you are generally referred to as flavors. By extension, some Linux distributions and other forked free-software projects sometimes use the term too. It's not necessarily the right term for this article, but its not exactly a slang term, and it's not without some precedent. Patch86 (talk) 22:36, 5 March 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Using the term "flavor" vs. "version" 

message: Someone added a link on the article page that went like this:
: http://www.diskinternals.com/glossary/udf.html l Good UDF writeup
When I checked that article out, I found that it was not a writeup, but a direct copy of this wikipedia article!
I sent them a mail through their contact web form and asked them to either include a reference to the wikipedia article in order to honor its origin or remove the text.
I've also removed the above link from the article here for the lack of additional information in the ref'd page.
Tempel 20:30, 27 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: This issue has not yet been resolved. I sent a reminder via the web site's contact form. Pieter-Bas (talk) 22:08, 13 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  DiskInternals responded with "Can we resolve this problem by sending to you a key for one of our products for free?". I asked them again to either comply with the conditions for re-using content that was published under the GFDL, or remove the content and replace it by an original work. Awaiting a reply. (More of their glossary violates the GFDL by the way. Is there some official wikipedia policie for dealing with this?) Pieter-Bas (talk) 13:32, 16 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Not really, the best we have is Wikipedia:Mirrors and forks. If they continue to ignore your request, you may want to follow the suggestion for a DMCA take down notice since it appears you have contributed to this article so they may be violationg your copyright Nil Einne (talk) 10:32, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: It looks like their stealing someone else's work now  Nil Einne (talk) 10:15, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Copyright violation at diskinternals.com? 

message: The metadata partition is a mandatory extension of UDF 2.50, and thus does not constitute what the "flavors" are meant for. The term "flavor" was introduced by me to explain the different support levels of a single UDF version, in order to communicate how a UDF 1.50 disc may use one flavor or the other. This was necessary because lots of software, while claiming to support UDF 1.50, did not support all flavors.
A filesystem supporting UDF 2.50, however, clearly has to support metadata partitions, and hence we do not need a "flavor" for distinction here.
That's why I've undone Reinoud's changes now.
Tempel (talk) 18:00, 6 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Metadata partition not a flavor 

message: ===Windows VAT Support===
The chart says that none of the versions of Windows supports VAT. I know that this is not true.
Windows does read UDF with VAT. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ososnilknarf (talk • contribs) 
: Those cells are empty. It only does not support it if it clearly says "NO". You can fill them in if you want. I made the chart from an ad hoc style list, which didn't include all the information. --Voidvector (talk) 01:12, 3 December 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I think there is significant room for improvement, but it is hard for an average contributor to get access to all those OSes. It takes hours to download/install those OS, then you need to learn how to mount/unmount/create CD/DVDs. Now, if you work somewhere where you have all the OS images readily available, and know how to test for this, be my guest, I like to know the compatibility of various systems too.  --Voidvector (talk) 23:38, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
replies: text:  A start would be to design the chart so that all UDF versions/`builds' can be described as '??'/'RO'/'RW'. The problem now occuring is that for VAT its possible to have 1.50 VAT and 2.0x VAT; they are different. Maybe version coloms that are splitted into coloms themselves for the various builds? The question we should keep in mind however is the purpose of the table and if it shouldn't be splitted up into two tables. What would a reader want to derive from the table or is it an extensive description of what OS supports As simple as upto what version can i format my disc before OS A can't read/write it anymore (since i haven't seen implmentations that are say only from 2.01 only). So maybe for OS A it would be sufficient to say UDF 2.01 for VAT reading but UDF 1.50 for VAT writing. Where as for OS B it could be that no sparables are to be read/written but plain is upto 2.01. (Side note: 'Meta' should be a build too IMHO). Maybe the user wants to know what media (CD/DVD/BD/Flash/...) an OS supports and what versions and builds. A seperate Read and Write table can also be an option. Too many variants...  --Reinoud (talk) 10:16, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

text: Does it support native UDF writing on other types of disks?. — trlkly 04:43, 18 October 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Chart appears to be wrong 

message: The chart says that none of the versions of Windows supports VAT. I know that this is not true.
Windows does read UDF with VAT. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ososnilknarf (talk • contribs) 
: Those cells are empty. It only does not support it if it clearly says "NO". You can fill them in if you want. I made the chart from an ad hoc style list, which didn't include all the information. --Voidvector (talk) 01:12, 3 December 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Windows VAT Support

message: The chart is still not what i'd like to see. Its still not clear as to which implementations can write what media types and in what build though a lot better than it used to be. --Reinoud (talk) 19:38, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I think there is significant room for improvement, but it is hard for an average contributor to get access to all those OSes. It takes hours to download/install those OS, then you need to learn how to mount/unmount/create CD/DVDs. Now, if you work somewhere where you have all the OS images readily available, and know how to test for this, be my guest, I like to know the compatibility of various systems too.  --Voidvector (talk) 23:38, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
replies: text:  A start would be to design the chart so that all UDF versions/`builds' can be described as '??'/'RO'/'RW'. The problem now occuring is that for VAT its possible to have 1.50 VAT and 2.0x VAT; they are different. Maybe version coloms that are splitted into coloms themselves for the various builds? The question we should keep in mind however is the purpose of the table and if it shouldn't be splitted up into two tables. What would a reader want to derive from the table or is it an extensive description of what OS supports As simple as upto what version can i format my disc before OS A can't read/write it anymore (since i haven't seen implmentations that are say only from 2.01 only). So maybe for OS A it would be sufficient to say UDF 2.01 for VAT reading but UDF 1.50 for VAT writing. Where as for OS B it could be that no sparables are to be read/written but plain is upto 2.01. (Side note: 'Meta' should be a build too IMHO). Maybe the user wants to know what media (CD/DVD/BD/Flash/...) an OS supports and what versions and builds. A seperate Read and Write table can also be an option. Too many variants...  --Reinoud (talk) 10:16, 17 December 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Chart Format

message: Windows XP does not natively support writing UDF on DVD-RAM discs. It does support writing FAT32 on DVD-RAM disks. I just verified that on Windows XP SP3 on Leneovo ThinkPad T60p which have a DVD-RAM drive. I'm changing the table to reflect that.--76.31.205.97 (talk) 17:36, 21 March 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Does it support native UDF writing on other types of disks?. — trlkly 04:43, 18 October 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Windows XP Native Write Support

message: This table is based almost entirely on original research. It's also questionable how to select which operating systems are put on the list, considering that there are many hundreds of operating systems and versions that may be of interest to someone. The formatting of the chart is also based on the concept of UDF "builds", which as far as I can tell is also an original idea of the Wiki editors. To the layman, the question is not what particular types of UDF partitions are supported, but whether the specification Revision is fully (correctly) supported or not, and if not then a source should be provided that explains the particular details for that OS. I don't think a chart like this is really necessary once the data is limited to verifiable sources. If editors insist on maintaining a chart, then I would suggest that you at least move it to its own page where it is less of an eyesore and does not impede on the quality of this article. For the time being I am going to remove the chart and see how that is received. If an editor wishes to retrieve the code for use on another page, it will be accessible from the article revision history prior to this timestamp. Ham Pastrami (talk) 01:03, 20 March 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Do you have sources for the chart you are putting in the article? Do you have sources for information other than self-references like the OSTA spec or the Philips page where they sell the verifier software? This article is not a place to quote highlights and trivia that you personally find interesting. It's supposed to be an encyclopedia article, sourced to verifiable secondary coverage. Ham Pastrami (talk) 10:11, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

text: Unfortunately I do not agree that what you are adding to the article is useful, and in some cases your choice of language is not even neutral. The fact that you can only attest "to your knowledge" rather than providing actual sources is admission that the content you have added/re-added is OR. Correct? As for time, this article has been in this unreferenced, low-quality state for a period of years and no indication of any reliable sources have surfaced. Time is up. Simply because you personally like UDF or have some kind of personal interest in it is not justification for failing to provide verifiable evidence of your claims when challenged, nor is it justification for adding trivia. You even reverted changes that cleaned up the language in the article, and replaced it with misspelled words. You can barely even write and yet you profess to be improving the quality of the article? Please address the concerns that I raised instead of performing unilateral reverts and changes that lower the quality of the article. Ham Pastrami (talk) 03:58, 23 March 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  The OS chart 

message: The infobox says filenames can contain any Unicode character, while the "Character set" paragraph seems to claim something completely different (ASCII and variants of it). Can someone please clarify?
--Xerces8 (talk) 10:18, 9 December 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Pali UDF (talk) 09:24, 9 September 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Character set? 

message: What's DosBox doing in the Table of operating systems? DosBox is more of an emulator than an operating system insofar as you can't boot it on bare hardware... 91.125.20.162 (talk) 18:07, 31 August 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  DosBox? 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just added archive links to  on Universal Disk Format. Please take a moment to review my edit. You may add  after the link to keep me from modifying it, if I keep adding bad data, but formatting bugs should be reported instead. Alternatively, you can add  to keep me off the page altogether, but should be used as a last resort. I made the following changes:
*Attempted to fix sourcing for http://support.apple.com/kb/TA26938?viewlocale=en_US
*Attempted to fix sourcing for http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/apple/macosx_updates/macosx10411comboupdateintel.html
*Attempted to fix sourcing for http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/apple/macosx_updates/macosx10411comboupdateppc.html
When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true or failed to let others know (documentation at ).
Cheers.—cyberbot IITalk to my owner:Online 13:57, 31 March 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified 

message: A section discussing use would be appropriate.  What are current use cases?  Has the spared build any merit for a hdd?  For flash storage?  Regards, ... PeterEasthope (talk) 15:16, 27 November 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Use 

message: The OS support table seems wrong - the listed sources claim windows 7 and later support UDF 2.60 for writing in any variant.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.193.229.175 (talk) 15:39, 27 November 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sources claim Windows 7/8/9 does read/write for UDF 2.60