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I'm formatting (a single partition on) my USB drive, for read-write use on multiple computers - at the very least Windows (XP and up), Mac OS (not sure which versions) and Linux (distributions which are no more than, say, 4 years old). In the olden days I would probably use FAT32, which I remember to be quite widely supported - but that has a 4GB file limit.

So, in this day and age, and for the OSes I mentioned (perhaps even others) - which filesystem should I choose? My current best guess is NTFS, since I know the Linux support is decent (or better) and for Windows it's native. Is there a better choice?

Notes:

  • Unlike this question, I can't accept the 4GB file limit. Also, the answer there suggests filesystems which typically require installing third-party drivers or have other issues.
  • I'm not interested in performance/security/fault tolerance or other such features, just portability.
  • I'm not asking which filesystem is "better", I just want to maximize the spectrum of systems I can use my USB drive with, without having to install drivers or update the OS.
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einpoklum
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1 Answers1

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If your emphasis is on maximum compatibility for your USB drive, I utilize exFAT on mine.

Like NTFS, exFAT has very large file size and partition size limits. This means you can store files that are larger than 4 GB apiece on a flash drive or SD card if it’s formatted with exFAT. exFAT is a strict upgrade over FAT32, and should be the best choice for external drives where you want a lightweight file system without FAT32’s file size limits.

exFAT is also more compatible than NTFS. While Mac OS X includes only read-only support for NTFS, Macs offer full read-write support for exFAT.

(Source)

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Run5k
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