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What's the best file system for an external drive? |
November 26, 2012
Cyberknight asked the Hard Drives, NAS Drives, Storage forum if a new flash drive should be formatted in FAT32 or NTFS.
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First, FAT32 pretty much guarantees that your drive will work with any computer you plug it into. To my knowledge, every computer and operating system released since the invention of the USB drive supports FAT32. I would be inclined to go with FAT32 for a flash drive, but NTFS for an external hard drive. Here's why:
Virtually every operating systgem modern enough to supporft USB ports can read and write FAT32. That's not the case with NTFS. For instance, you need a third-party utility to write to an NTFS drive on the Mac. Believe me, you don't want to install software on your friend's Mac (or the library's).
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Link: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2013758/whats-the-best-file-system-for-an-external-drive.html
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