- Nov 7, 2013
- 2
- 0
- 10,510
I'm preparing a 2TB hard drive to serve as external data storage for Windows and Mac users on an external USB 2.0 HDD case.
I'm considering using exFAT since it's both readable and writable under both systems.
While researching online I found some useful info but it also seems that MacOS support to exFAT used to be bad before 10.6 and for that, older posts used to disencourage exFAT use.
What I'd like to know is...
People say that exFAT is "optimized" for flash storage and so it would lose efficiency on big disk drives (such as my 2TB disk drive). What does it really mean to "lose efficiency"??? How bad can it get? Is it going to be slow? Badly slow? Unsafe for the data (this is crucial!!)? Should I stick with NTFS and find a way to make the Macs write on it (like described below)?
Would anyone disencourage me to use exFAT nowadays, considering that MacOS support to this file system seems to have improved?
Useful info for the answer: the data on the drive includes documents, photo and also some videos. People wil generally use the files on office work like editing documents with images (Word and InDesign) and eventually editing some video (although I think it would be fair to ask them to temporarily copying files to their local drives when doing so since the USB 2.0 will likely be a bottleneck anyway).
P.S.: I know there are 3rd party software to make Macs write on NTFS and also to make Windows read and write to HFS+ but I would'nt like to ask people to pay to be able to access the disc.
P.S. 2: I also know that Macs can natively write on NTFS under some fstab hack.
It would be undesirable (although acceptable) for me to configure each one of the Macs to be able to read an write on the drive. I'd consider this a "Plan B", just in the case exFAT should not be an option. Also, I do not have a Mac to check if this info is correct so I'd appreciate if someone who has done this with success could share their experience with me.
Thanks for now...
I'm considering using exFAT since it's both readable and writable under both systems.
While researching online I found some useful info but it also seems that MacOS support to exFAT used to be bad before 10.6 and for that, older posts used to disencourage exFAT use.
What I'd like to know is...
People say that exFAT is "optimized" for flash storage and so it would lose efficiency on big disk drives (such as my 2TB disk drive). What does it really mean to "lose efficiency"??? How bad can it get? Is it going to be slow? Badly slow? Unsafe for the data (this is crucial!!)? Should I stick with NTFS and find a way to make the Macs write on it (like described below)?
Would anyone disencourage me to use exFAT nowadays, considering that MacOS support to this file system seems to have improved?
Useful info for the answer: the data on the drive includes documents, photo and also some videos. People wil generally use the files on office work like editing documents with images (Word and InDesign) and eventually editing some video (although I think it would be fair to ask them to temporarily copying files to their local drives when doing so since the USB 2.0 will likely be a bottleneck anyway).
P.S.: I know there are 3rd party software to make Macs write on NTFS and also to make Windows read and write to HFS+ but I would'nt like to ask people to pay to be able to access the disc.
P.S. 2: I also know that Macs can natively write on NTFS under some fstab hack.
It would be undesirable (although acceptable) for me to configure each one of the Macs to be able to read an write on the drive. I'd consider this a "Plan B", just in the case exFAT should not be an option. Also, I do not have a Mac to check if this info is correct so I'd appreciate if someone who has done this with success could share their experience with me.
Thanks for now...
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