Option 1: Format to NTFS and buy this app for your Mac The alternative solutions do require more tinkering. The good news is, it's not exFAT or nothing. OK, what are my alternatives to using exFAT? And the same can be said for a Windows HD, if you only plan on connecting it to a PC, then NTFS is the way to go. However, if you plan on only using a drive on your Mac and it has MacOS High Sierra or newer installed, you'll want to stick to Apple's APFS format. And if that's how you plan on using your drive, then you're right - exFAT is the way to go. It comes down to which OS are you going to use the drive with?Īccording 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. Natively read/write HFS+ on MacOS High Sierra and newer.Required for local Time Machine backupsĪPFS (Hierarchical File System, aka Mac OS Extended).Natively read/write HFS+ on MacOS up to Mac OS X Sierra.HFS+ (Hierarchical File System, aka Mac OS Extended) Full NTFS support on Mac requires paid third-party app.Natively read/write exFAT on Windows and MacOS.

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. While exFAT is compatible with Macs - and will be compatible with some devices that don’t support NTFS, like digital cameras - it still isn’t quite as.The file format standard you use for your external drive will depend on how you plan on using the drive. ExFAT drives can be accessed on Linux by installing the appropriate software. While Mac OS X includes only read-only support for NTFS, Macs offer full read-write support for exFAT. Paragon NTFS for Mac 15 ($20) is a file system driver that allows Mac OS X Yosemite and later (incuding macOS Sierra) to read and write to hard drives, solid-state storage devices, and USB thumb. Follow the below steps for the following: Step 1: Go to “Applications”-” Utilities” and launch “Disk Utility”. You can easily convert a “FAT32” file system to “exFAT” using the “Disk Utility” option on Mac. Part 3: Bonus Tips to Convert “FAT32” to NTFS on Mac and Linux 1. For each file, exFAT uses two separate 64-bit length fields in the directory: the Valid Data Length (VDL) which indicates the real size of the file, and the physical data length.

Like NTFS, exFAT can pre-allocate disk space for a file by just marking arbitrary space on disk as 'allocated'. There’s software for both to get functionality anyway. If more Mac’s are gonna access it go Mac. For all my drives I use NTFS or Mac Journaled depending on the situation. Ideally for long term storage LTO is the way to go but that has a pricey point of entry. Never trust ExFAT or anything aside from quick transfers.

Exfat or ntfs for mac