exFAT or NTFS on a External HDD?

kiicki

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Sep 1, 2014
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I don't own a MAC so it won't bother me do use NTFS.
But I can't decide if I want to use exFAT or NTFS.
FAT32 is not a option since transfer big files on it.

I use the external HDD to transfer movies, music, documents.
many people say that NTFS is better, but i did a benchmark, and exFAT and better results in everything. Not by much but still better.

The sequential write was 5MB/s faster then the NTFS and that was the biggest win on the test.

I will also use my external HDD for a system backup also, so I need to check if it will support exFAT, if it doesn't then NTFS would be a easy choice.

 

kiicki

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At the moment, no. But for me exFAT wins at everything. It's just a bonus that Mac can write and read the exfat format, but only read NTFS.

The tests shows better performance on exFAT compared to NTFS, so what have I missed, since everyone recommends NTFS rather then exFAT?

I did the testing with ''CrystalDiskMark'' software.
And just checked that system backups supports exFAT, so maybe I will just stick with exFAT, if not there is a reason to use NTFS
 
exFAT was designed with solid state storage in mind, such as flash drives, so is writing less data than NTFS, and as a byproduct has fewer features and is less reliable. Whether or not you need these extra features and reliability can only be answered by you.

Since you seem to care enough about Mac compatibility to bring it up, you may weigh that in your decision, as you will need extra software to have the ability to write to an NTFS formatted disk from a Mac based computer.
 

kiicki

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Thanks! Will use NTFS
 

McHenryB

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Good choice. As a journalled filesystem NTFS is much more robust than exFAT. As long as performance is good enough (and I have never had any problems with NTFS) I would always trade the added reliability over minor performance gains.