What Filesystem should be used for a 4TB drive for both Windows and OSX compatibility?

windows macos filesystems external-hard-drive

5,190

I want to use something native between OSX and Windows, as I don't want to risk losing the data over filesystem incompatibilities.

Whatever you choose is going to require you formatting the current drive.

have USB 3.0 and want something that will allow files greater than 4GB. I do not mind installing a small set of drivers on the Windows machine(s), but I would strongly prefer to leave the Mac machine untouched.

You should look at exFAT or simply choose a Linux file system ( i.e. ext4). Windows should be able to read many of those, and OS X of course will also. Any file system that these operating systems cannot read would require drivers for.

5,190

Nicholas Yost

Updated on September 18, 2022

Comments

Nicholas Yost almost 2 years

Note: I am aware of similar questions. The one's I seen here are for Windows, OSX, and Linux (which I do not need). I also can use Mountain Lion, which the other questions did not mention.

I was going to use NTFS, but OSX Mountain Lion can only read that filesystem and not write to it for some reason. I want to use something native between OSX and Windows, as I don't want to risk losing the data over filesystem incompatibilities.

I have USB 3.0 and want something that will allow files greater than 4GB. I do not mind installing a small set of drivers on the Windows machine(s), but I would strongly prefer to leave the Mac machine untouched.

Thanks!
- Rich Homolka over 11 years
  
  exFAT, a.k.a. FAT64 is probably the best you can use. You'll not lose any data, but you may have issues with metadata differences with the two systems.
- martineau over 11 years
  
  Actually I don't think OS X can read exFat partitions.
- Gordon Davisson over 11 years
  
  @martineau: ExFAT support was added to OS X in version 10.6.5.
- martineau over 11 years
  
  @GordonDavisson: Oh, all I know is that it wasn't supported at some point, but since it is now, for anyone interested the exFAT driver for Windows can be downloaded from Microsoft here.
tripflag almost 9 years

exFAT is probably a gopd choice. Windows can read ext4 drives using ext2fsd, but I'm having trouble getting my GPT-formatted 3TB external to mount. I would try various combinations of GPT/MBR formatting, one large and several smaller volumes, to see what works with both OSes. Also note that ext2fsd uses gigabytes of ram.