5 differences between exFAT and NTFS for your internal and external drives

Whether you’re adding a new internal SSD to your computer or picking up an external drive for something a little more portable, you won’t get far unless you format that drive with a file system your computer can recognize. If you’re using a Windows computer, that means a choice between FAT32, exFAT, and NTFS, which are all file systems developed by Microsoft for the operating system.

FAT32 is widely supported, but it has severe restrictions on file and partition sizes, which make it unsuitable for most modern uses. Other operating systems can use NTFS, but it’s not fully supported on anything other than Windows. ExFAT is platform agnostic, but older operating systems might not be able to use it without additional software. So, if you had to choose between exFAT and NTFS, which one would you use?

5

Compatibility

Both were designed by Microsoft but for different uses

Compatibility with the operating systems you will be using the drive on is the most important consideration when choosing between any file system. If your operating system can’t read the way the data is structured, it doesn’t know how to display the files you need. Both exFAT and NTFS are Microsoft-developed, so they will work on any version of Windows.

• exFAT: Works with all versions of Windows, any modern version of macOS, and any Linux distribution (Kernel 5.7 or newer has native support; earlier versions will need additional software)
• NTFS: All versions of Windows, Xbox One, X|S, read-only on macOS (it is possible to get write permissions, but it’s annoying), limited read-only support on Linux

But support on other operating systems can vary wildly. exFAT was designed as a portable file system to bridge the gap between use cases for FAT32 and NTFS, and as such, has wide support in other operating systems, including macOS, Android, iOS, and many of the modern gaming consoles. NTFS works best with Windows only. Although you can make macOS able to write to NTFS drives, that’s not an ideal situation.

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4

File and partition sizes

Both are similar but with some crucial differences

Another important aspect to consider when choosing any file system is the size limits for individual files and partitions. With 32-bit file systems, the limit was 4GB per file, and you couldn’t make partitions over 8TB. That was a huge amount of storage at the time it was created, so it’s likely Microsoft didn’t think far ahead.

But both exFAT and NTFS have much greater limitations. exFAT can support up to 128 petabytes for both file size and partition size, which is a really large number. You can store 128 billion 1MB JPEGs in that space or 10,437.052 years of video footage or scroll through 100 TikToks per hour for the next 11,239 years or so. NTFS has lower limits, but they’re still well in excess of any data files you could create. The file and volume sizes increase according to the cluster size used, from 16TB at 4KB cluster size to 8PB at 2,048KB cluster size.

Both are larger than the largest hard drives you can buy today, so file and volume size isn’t a real-world consideration for either file system.

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3

Features

NTFS wins out in feature set as the more modern file system

NTFS is a more modern file system than exFAT and, as such, is filled with features that you will appreciate even if you never know they’re there. The file system used in every modern Windows installation includes file permissions for security purposes, shadow copies for backups, encryption, the ability to set disk quota limits, and more. You also get journaling, which tracks file and system changes so you can recover errors if your computer crashes. You also get the ability to set hard links, and it’s an ideal file system for your boot drive. The things that make it great for internal drives mean it’s not that suited for portable drives, but that’s okay because exFAT is here to fill that role.

ExFAT’s feature set is smaller, but that’s because it was designed as a lightweight file system for use on USB drives and SD cards. It does have a few useful features, though, like the ability to restore deleted files after unintentional deletion and other data recovery tasks. That’s why it’s so good for removable storage and is the default file system for SDXC cards larger than 32GB.

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2

Speed

exFAT is often faster for external drives but loses out to NTFS for internal storage

SSD speeds, TrueNAS Scale

The speed of file transfers is an important consideration, and which file system you choose depends on your file sizes. ExFAT can handle large file sizes better, which is handy when transferring video files off your camera or loading movie files into a media center. It’s also faster for data transfer speeds on USB devices. NTFS handles batches of smaller files much more efficiently, which is perfect for internal drives, whether used as an operating system drive or for storage.

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1

Storage type

Are you going to be using an internal or external drive?

If you’re putting an internal drive into a Windows-based computer, you will most often want to use NTFS as the file system. NTFS is designed to work with your operating system as a cohesive, fault-tolerant whole. It’s the file system Windows will default to, and there is no real reason to change it for normal use. If you aren’t running Windows as your operating system, you’ll want to choose neither of these file system formats for internal drives and go with the most commonly used option for your OS. For macOS, that’s APFS, and for Linux users, it might be ext4, XFS, Btrfs, or ZFS, depending on the distro and intended use case.

For external drives, it depends on the other devices you plan to use it with. If everything is Windows-based or is an Xbox One or X|S, then you can use NTFS. For any other use cases, exFAT is the best for external hard drives, flash drives, and SSDs because it has the widest range of compatibility. The exFAT file system is compatible with Linux, macOS, Windows, and consoles like the PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S.

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NTFS and exFAT are both useful file systems in the right situation

Microsoft designed both NTFS and exFAT. They are intended for different use cases, mainly with a split between internal and external drives, but there are a few other reasons you might choose one over the other. exFAT is compatible with more devices, while NTFS has more advanced features. If you’re a Mac user, you’ll want to use either exFAT or APFS for your external drives because NTFS on macOS is irritating and can lead to data corruption.