Best format for an external HDD in 2019 to be used in MacOs, Windows 10 and Ubuntu Linux 19.04

I would like to have an external drive 2TB (USB 3 capable) in the best possible format to be able to write and read in the 3 operating systems.

What is the best to do for external hhd in 2019.

What is the best to do for external hhd in 2019.

fat, ext2 and ext3 are basically obsolete and ext4 is not accepted by Microsoft. You will have 2 options:

• exFAT
• NTFS

where exFAT has the best compatibility across all different systems (it is supported on MAC, Windows, Linux, Playstation and lots more) but will require installing the exfat driver on Linux.

Consider splitting the drive into two partitions. A large NTFS partition for data that is more stable, as well as read/write on Windows and Linux. A small exFAT partition to copy files from Mac OS.

Your file system options are:

• FAT32. Read/write on all three systems. Not journaled. File size < 4G.

• NTFS. Poor write support on Mac.

• exFAT. Read/write on all three systems. Not journaled.

While you can fix minor problems on all three file systems with fsck, you will have to use MS Windows to fix anything major.

If you add phones to the mix, you'll have to use FAT32 or exFAT. As long as you don't hit the file size limit of FAT32, they're pretty much the same. However, I would not use a drive formatted with FAT32 or exFAT for anything that isn't transient or unimportant. I recently had problems with both file systems on camera SD cards that required reformatting to fix. I don't even want to think about having the same issues with a 2TB hard drive.

NTFS is the most reliable of the three file systems because it is journaled. However, Mac OS has poor NTFS write support. You'd probably have to purchase the Paragon NTFS driver. See How-To Geek: How to Write to NTFS Drives on a Mac.