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External HDD ExFat vs NTFS?

Thedudely1
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Go to solution Solved by Mighty_Miro_WD,
Hi there @Thedudely1!

 

It depends on which device you're trying to format. For smaller flash based storage devices exFAT will be faster, while on large disk partitions NTFS would be the more logical solution - exFAT is designed to be used more on removable/flash media and embedded storage while NTFS is intended for use on high-density storage mediums, i.e. hard drives and SSDs.

 

Hope this helps.

 

Cheers! :)

Posted

So I have an external 1TB HDD that I don't really care about recoverable or reliable it is, what I need from it right now is performance and the ability to store 1TB of stuff on it. I know that both ExFat and NTFS can hold 1TB+ of data, but which one is faster on a HDD? I've heard somewhat conflicting answers so far. I know that ExFat is made for things like external flash drives and is not optimized for HDDs but I also have heard that it has less overhead than NTFS. ExFat supports all the features I would need it to be able to do. I plan on storing all my games on this drive so there's nothing I couldn't just re download on it. 

 

 

Short version: Is Exfat faster than NTFS on a 1TB external HDD?

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try both... u could always reformat if u dont like one

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try both... u could always reformat if u dont like one

I tried this and they both read/write at the same speed (this could very well be the limit of USB 2.0 though.) exFAT however did use less of my CPU which is very handy and helped to solve the issue I was having. I'm sticking with exFAT for now.

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Hi there @Thedudely1!

 

It depends on which device you're trying to format. For smaller flash based storage devices exFAT will be faster, while on large disk partitions NTFS would be the more logical solution - exFAT is designed to be used more on removable/flash media and embedded storage while NTFS is intended for use on high-density storage mediums, i.e. hard drives and SSDs.

 

Hope this helps.

 

Cheers! :)

If this post helped you, please like and choose it as a best answer.   :)
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