If you were creating a VeraCrypt container on an external spinning hard disk drive that will only be used in Windows would you format it as exFAT or NTFS? I'm looking for all the pros and cons for each file format.
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NTFS has much more advantages over exFAT (which in turn is optimized version for flash drives ). exFAT basically is the same as FAT32, but doesn't have FAT32 limitation in 4Gb maximum file size and size of partition. NTFS allow you to use file permissions that applies only for running operation system as well to use ADS (alternative data streams - that allow to hide extra "invisible" files behind regular file). Many other operation system such as linux, BSD and Mac OS can use NTFS too (some of them allow read-only mode only but ntfs-3g will allow read/write operations, but should be use carefully because of permissions). If you going to use VeraCrypt mostly with windows, then NTFS might be preferable
Alex
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FWIW: veracrypt-file-system-option-for-larger-files now has a nice list of file-system formats with pros and cons.
Yahoo Serious
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