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User profile for user: Inpresmoj
Inpresmoj Author
User level: Level 1
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Is exFat best for all external drives

Apple tec support have advised me that even though im only using my external drives in apple devices, ie imac 2020, soon to arrive macbook air 2020 that I should format in exFat as its designed for external drives. I’ve got a 250G ssd thumb drive which is used daily for small data transfers and a couple of 1TB mechanical hard drives for backup used monthly.


I was going to go with APFS for the SSD and mac os extended for the mechanical drives as this seems to be the best options from the research ive done, i want the safest option.

iMac 27″, macOS 10.15

Posted on Nov 18, 2020 2:53 PM

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User profile for user: HWTech
HWTech
User level: Level 9
63,350 points

Posted on Nov 18, 2020 8:13 PM

If you are only going to use the drive with macOS, then I would only use MacOS Extended (Journaled) since APFS is a new file system that still has to work out some kinks to work out. I've found a lot of unrepairable APFS file system issues on some of our organization's Macs that have required completely erasing the whole physical drive to correct (cloning the drive, erasing it, then restoring with another clone).

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User profile for user: HWTech
HWTech
User level: Level 9
63,350 points

Nov 18, 2020 8:13 PM in response to Inpresmoj

If you are only going to use the drive with macOS, then I would only use MacOS Extended (Journaled) since APFS is a new file system that still has to work out some kinks to work out. I've found a lot of unrepairable APFS file system issues on some of our organization's Macs that have required completely erasing the whole physical drive to correct (cloning the drive, erasing it, then restoring with another clone).

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Is exFat best for all external drives

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