External SSD ExFAT vs Mac OS Extended

I have a WD My Passport SSD that I left it in the default ExFAT format that it ships with. I am moving a folder of 508 GB (according to Finder) of project files from a spinning disk encrypted external disk that is formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled). When copied to the ExFAT SSD, the folder size is 890 GB. I was definitely not expecting that. Does it sound correct? Is ExFAT really that much less efficient than Mac OS Extended?

MacBook Pro TouchBar and Touch ID, macOS High Sierra (10.13.1)

Posted on Feb 24, 2018 7:44 PM

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1 reply

RiverRat42 Author

Level 1

22 points

Feb 26, 2018 7:50 AM in response to RiverRat42

I went ahead and reformatted the drive to an encrypted APFS volume. (I tried HFS+, but when I went to encrypted macOS forced it to APFS.) The files take up the same amount of space as on the source drive and I now have 490 GB free. So, the answer to my initial question is... yes, ExFAT is ridiculously inefficient compared to the Apple file systems.

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External SSD ExFAT vs Mac OS Extended

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