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I'm formatting (a single partition on) my USB drive, for read-write use on multiple computers - at the very least Windows (XP and up), Mac OS (not sure which versions) and Linux (distributions which are no more than, say, 4 years old). In the olden days I would probably use FAT32, which I remember to be quite widely supported - but that has a 4GB file limit.

So, in this day and age, and for the OSes I mentioned (perhaps even others) - which filesystem should I choose? My current best guess is NTFS, since I know the Linux support is decent (or better) and for Windows it's native. Is there a better choice?

Notes:

  • Unlike this question, I can't accept the 4GB file limit. Also, the answer there suggests filesystems which typically require installing third-party drivers or have other issues.
  • I'm not interested in performance/security/fault tolerance or other such features, just portability.
  • I'm not asking which filesystem is "better", I just want to maximize the spectrum of systems I can use my USB drive with, without having to install drivers or update the OS.
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einpoklum
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    @DanielB: Unfortunately, not really, since that question does not have >4GB support requirement which precludes FAT. The accepted answer there does not actually answer my question. – einpoklum Jan 14 '17 at 20:17
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    Nothing has changed. If you absolutely want support for large files, the answer is simply: No. Linux doesn't do exFAT (which is super terrible with small files by the way) and most likely won't for years to come. – Daniel B Jan 14 '17 at 22:02

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If your emphasis is on maximum compatibility for your USB drive, I utilize exFAT on mine.

Like NTFS, exFAT has very large file size and partition size limits. This means you can store files that are larger than 4 GB apiece on a flash drive or SD card if it’s formatted with exFAT. exFAT is a strict upgrade over FAT32, and should be the best choice for external drives where you want a lightweight file system without FAT32’s file size limits.

exFAT is also more compatible than NTFS. While Mac OS X includes only read-only support for NTFS, Macs offer full read-write support for exFAT.

(Source)

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Run5k
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  • Do most Linux distributions support it "out of the box"? – einpoklum Jan 14 '17 at 21:15
  • I am certainly not a Linux subject matter expert, but I think it is safe to say that most distributions don't support exFAT out-of-the-box. While the capability to natively support exFAT may be there, any shortfalls can usually be mitigated by installing the exfat-fuse and exfat-utils packages on your preferred distro. The bottom line is that there really isn't an ideal USB drive OS solution, but from my perspective exFAT offers the most compatibility across the spectrum of possibilities. – Run5k Jan 14 '17 at 21:42
  • In that case, it is inferior to NTFS: It requires root access (or a rather complicated procedure) to mount. That's not acceptable. – einpoklum Jan 14 '17 at 22:42