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I am buying 2 TB external HDD. It will mostly be used on windows system but once in a while I might want to use it on a Mac. exFAT seems to be the best way to go about it but I came across a couple of articles that suggest that exFAT is more susceptible to corruption because it has only one FAT file table.

Should I be concerned? Any better way out there? Any watch out points if I want to use exFAT?

Whiskeyjack
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  • exFAT is bad if you want to store a lot of very small files on it. E.g. a 500KB file will waste up to 12% of disc space because of the 64KB block size. – Robert Sep 19 '21 at 16:41
  • Mainly pics and videos. And its OK even if I am wasting 20% space. But losing data due to corruption is not OK. – Whiskeyjack Sep 19 '21 at 17:02
  • If you're considering NTFS, a Mac can read and write using fuse (which works well on Linux, too) or other drivers. See https://www.howtogeek.com/236055/HOW-TO-WRITE-TO-NTFS-DRIVES-ON-A-MAC/ – DrMoishe Pippik Sep 19 '21 at 19:35
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    Don't use exfat for a large hard drive if you worry about your data. It has no redundancy for the FAT (file allocation table), so it's extremely easy to corrupt the drive by unplugging it without unmounting and if that happens. You will never recover the data in a easy way. I lost a 2TB hard drive in this exact way. The computer went to sleep, it "unplugged" the drive. All the data was gone and reconstructing it using a tool would have been impossible. It was an archive drive with millions of files on it.

    Fat32 has a 4GB file limitation, but supports up to 8TB partitions. Or use NTFS.

     – Christopher Thomas Jul 10 '23 at 13:15

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The exFAT disk format is not a problem as long as the disk functions correctly.

If the disk goes woefully bad, the one FAT file table is not the biggest problem, since you will need to anyway recover the contents, and there will be various warning signs before the disk dies.

The best insurance is not the disk format - but keeping backups.

harrymc
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  • yes, and once the data is gone, good luck getting it back. I lost a 2TB hard drive like this. Everything gone just cause the computer went to sleep and somehow unplugged the drive, computer woke up, the hard drive was corrupted and unrecoverable. – Christopher Thomas Jul 10 '23 at 13:16