The list is longer than you’d think, with terms like “APFS (Case-sensitive)” and “Mac OS Extended (Journaled, Encrypted)” to choose from.I was pleasantly surprised by the read/write speed of the drive, and appreciate the physical backup for all of my Google Drive storage - and with a capacity.Difference. Based on read speed and internal testing.So you’re using Disk Utility to partition your new hard drive when you’re presented with a choice of potential file systems. My Passport Go is the perfect drive to take anywhere with confidence. With a rubber protective bumper on the outside, a solid state drive on the inside, and a built-in cable for convenience this is no ordinary drive. My Passport Go is the tough SSD drive built to travel.The iCloud can be thought of as an extra service. When you log into the iCloud, the email address and password are your Apple ID. As mentioned earlier, the Apple ID is used for signing into the iCloud.
Use this for an external drive that will plug into both kinds of computers.Choosing a file system is basically choosing between these three options. ExFAT is the best cross platform option, designed to work on Windows and macOS systems. On macOS High Sierra, it’s used on all mechanical and hybrid drives, and older versions of macOS used it by default for all drives. Mac OS Extended, also known as HFS Plus or HFS+, is the file system used on all Macs from 1998 until now. It’s optimized for solid state drives (SSDs) and other all-flash storage devices, though it will also work on mechanical and hybrid drives. APFS, or “Apple File System,” is one of the new features in macOS High Sierra. Run windows through usb for macMac OS Extended: Best for Mechanical Drives, Or Drives Used With Older macOS VersionsMac OS Extended was the default file system used by every Mac from 1998 until 2017, when APFS replaced it. And forget about reading an APFS drive from Windows: there aren’t even third-party tools out there for that yet.APFS also isn’t compatible with Time Machine at this time, so you’ll have to format backup drives as Mac OS Extended.Other than that, there’s probably no reason not to use APFS at this point, especially on solid state drives and flash memory. If there’s an older Mac you need a drive to work with, APFS is a bad choice for that drive. 2016’s macOS Sierra was the first operating system capable of reading and writing to APFS systems, meaning any Mac using an older operating system will not be able to write to APFS-formatted drives. Let’s dive into a bit more details about the top three choices below, and then explain a few of the sub-options.So what’s the catch? Reverse compatibility. ExFat: Best for External Drives Shared With Windows ComputersExFat should basically only be used on drives that need to work with both Windows and macOS computers. And any drive that needs to work with older Macs, running El Capitan or earlier, should absolutely be formatted with Mac OS Extended, because APFS is not compatible with those computers.APFS also doesn’t work with Time Machine, so you should format any drive you want to use for backing up your Mac using Mac OS Extended. This is in part because the benefits of APFS aren’t as clear on mechanical drives.If you’ve got a mechanical hard drive, and you intend to use it only with Macs, it’s probably best to stick with Mac OS Extended. By default, it doesn’t, which is why you can’t have a file called “Fun.txt” and “fun.txt” in the same folder on a Mac. Case Sensitivity mostly determines whether the file system sees capital letters as different. And unless you really know what you’re doing, and have a specific reason for wanting it, you shouldn’t use case sensitivity when formatting a drive.To be clear, you can use capital letters in file names either way. So despite the disadvantages, ExFAT is your best option for cross-platform hard drives.RELATED: How to Read a Mac-Formatted Drive on a Windows PC Case Sensitive: Avoid Unless You Know Why You Want ItAPFS and Mac OS Extended both offer a “Case Sensitive” option, but macOS does not use this setting by default. Sure, you could read a Mac formatted drive on Windows or read a Windows formatted drive on a Mac, but both solutions either cost money or are unstable. It’s not a particularly optimized file format—it’s far more vulnerable to file fragmentation than APFS or Mac OS Extended, for one thing, and metadata and other features used by macOS aren’t present.But formatting a drive with ExFAT offers one huge advantage: both Windows and macOS computers and both read and write to this format. What Is The Difference Between My Passport For Pc And How To Encrypt YourBoth APFS and Mac OS Extended offer an Encrypted option, and if security is a concern, it’s a good idea to use this on external drives.The main downside is that forgetting the encryption key means losing access to your files. Encryption Protects Your Files, But Might Affect PerformanceWe’ve told you how to encrypt your macOS hard drives, but the fastest way to get this done is enabling encryption when you first format the drive. There’s not many benefits to turning it on, but all kinds of things might break, and dragging files from one to the other might mean data loss. Presumably, a case-sensitive file system was just seen as less user-friendly.Today, enabling case sensitivity could break some Mac apps that expect a case-insensitive file system.Our recommendation is to avoid case sensitivity for both APFS and Mac OS Extended unless you have a specific reason for wanting it. UNIX-based systems are generally case sensitive and Mac OS X was the first Mac operating system based on the UNIX standard, so this is a little unusual. You almost certainly do not. Only use this if you absolutely need compatibility with Windows versions older than XP SP2. MS-DOS (FAT) is an ancient reverse-compatible file format, a precursor to FAT32. Here’s a quick summary of those. Other Options: MS-DOS (FAT) and Windows NTEagle-eyed observers will notice a few more options than what I’ve outlined above. Reading and writing will be slower on an encrypted drive, but we think it’s generally worth it—especially on portable Macs, like laptops. ![]()
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