It is the default file system on Linux now.
Ext4 is the latest file system with outstanding performance improvement. Then, as this feature is added into Ext3, the file system can be quickly recovered even the system is suddenly off power. Therefore, the data will be lost as the system gets crashed. Of course, it can be used for hybrid hard drives and mechanical hard drives.Įxt2/Ext3/Ext4: On Linux, Ext2/Ext3/Ext4 is the commonly used file systems. This file system emphasize on flash drives and SSD.
It is suitable for the mechanical hard disk and the hard drive holding the old Mac OS.ĪPFS: APFS is the specific file system for Mac OS High Sierra (10.13) and the later versions. Ahead of the release of APFS, HFS+ is the default file system on Mac OS. HFS +: HFS + is the advanced version of HFS on Mac OS. It supports a file up to 16EB and a volume up to 24ZB. It is the supplement for FAT32 which doesn’t support flash drives. Step 2: Right-click on the external hard disk and select Format option from. Note: if you have stored data to the drive, please back it up before formatting the disk. Step 1: Connect your external hard drive with your computer and open Windows Explorer to check if it can be recognized. Besides, it is not available in the flash drives.ĮxFat: exFAT is the file system used for flash drives in Windows. Method 1: Format external hard drive in Windows. Mac OSX and Linux can read the NTFS partitions, but they cannot modify the inside data. But it is not compatible with all operating systems. NTFS: NTFS is the best Windows file system, given to performance and data security. Besides, some digital cameras, game consoles and set-top boxed merely FAT32, but not NTFS. If the hard drive is over 1TB, it should be in the NTFS file system. Now, it is mainly used in mobile storage devices with low capacity. I do have an old ubuntu live cd so I could. FAT32: FAT32 is an old but still popular Windows file system. So next person says that the HDD recorder is probably ext2/3 and you need to format your external drive in linux.