Why shouldn't I always format hard drives in ExFAT?

I'm in the process of formatting an external hard drive with the purpose of long storage of backups (photos and whatnot). Currently I use Mac OS, but I'm not sure I won't switch in the future. As far as I know, ExFAT is compatible with both Windows and Mac OS

Are there any disadvantages to formatting in ExFat rather than Mac OS extended or some other non cross compatible filesystem? Why shouldn't I always chose ExFAT, since it guarantees that I'll always be able to read my disk with pretty much any computer?

user2723984

Posted 2019-09-28T12:11:01.953

Reputation: 103

1There's no real disadvantage to using ExFAT vs another format, and as far as I know it's still the 'go to' format for moving drives between windows and OSX. However this question is likely to just end up with opinion based answers, as there's no 'right' or 'wrong' answer and so I've voted to close as such. – djsmiley2k TMW – 2019-09-28T12:18:00.697

@djsmiley2k thanks, one of the goal of this question was to determine whether it is opinion based, or whether it is better, for example, to chose a native Mac OS filesystem for long term usage on Mac OS, for whatever reason unknown to me. This doesn't appear to be the case. – user2723984 – 2019-09-28T13:05:25.720

Answers

ExFAT is probably the most portable solution, being natively readable on most OSes.
It doesn't suffer from the 4GB file size limit of FAT.

On the other hand, you can't use ExFAT for Time Machine, only HFS+ ...so your backups will have to be simple manual copies.

Tetsujin

Posted 2019-09-28T12:11:01.953

Reputation: 22 456

-1

Well, for one thing, Exfat is not supported in any Linux system, which means you cannot read or write in that device. You are also making the hard drive unsafe. for usage by minimizing it's security hence possibly causing easy access for malware.

Nazcore

Posted 2019-09-28T12:11:01.953

Reputation: 1

Hi, thanks for the answer. Could you elaborate on your last point please? – user2723984 – 2019-09-28T13:31:18.997

This is wrong, it has support. Most distros may not have out of the box support but it can be easily installed with one or a couple of packets. – None – 2019-09-28T14:48:05.267