What filesystem should i use for external hard drive

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The Best Tech Newsletter Anywhere Join , subscribers and get a daily digest of news, geek trivia, and our feature articles. But that's another article really! And because it is a journalled file system, it's a robust and reliable file system. And in the Linux world, there are lots of choices, with ext4 still being the modern default.

However, most external devices are used specifically to share files, so which format should you use for that? The short answer is: use exFAT for all external storage devices you will be using to share files.

FAT32 and exFAT are the remaining options you're given once you rule out the more 'native' file systems as above. These are less robust file systems - so you need to take more care when e. As long as you do that properly, every time, you should have no issues. Don't fret, though. Below I'll break down the different formats, and explain their place in the grand scheme of external drives.

The file format standard you use for your external drive will depend on how you plan on using the drive. But before I can dig into what makes sense when, look over this quick rundown of the different standards and which OS each one is compatible with.

According to the list above, formatting your hard drive to exFAT so that you can read and write on either a PC or Mac seems like the obvious solution. And if that's how you plan on using your drive, then you're right -- exFAT is the way to go. The good news is, it's not exFAT or nothing. The alternative solutions do require more tinkering. If you keep your hard drive's out-of-the-box NTFS format, you'll be able to read the drive when it's connected to a Mac, but you won't be able to write to it.

In other words, you can look at files saved on the drive, but you can't save any new files from your Mac. You can also manage free space on the drives efficiently, copy-on-write metadata scheme to improve performance, thereby reducing chances of data corruption, and increased focus on encryption. This was designed by Microsoft to provide similar compatibility to FAT32 without the pesky limitations. This makes it unsuitable for most modern purposes.

Ideally, the best file format is the one that covers your needs across all the platforms you use. Here's how to partition an external hard drive for Time Machine on your Mac so you can store other files too. With his M.