WD Elements 1TB External USB HDD support exFAT

Hi there

I am wondering if formatting my WD Elements External Hard Drive to exFAT requires the hardrive to be relatvely new (it is quite old) or would need some sort of compatibility label to be used with exFAT. It is currently NTFS and I am not sure if formatting it to exFAT may cause it to function incorrectly.

I am wanting the most compatible format for both Windows and Mac, so I believe exFAT is most appropriate.

Any advice?

ellellell1 said:

Hi there

I am wondering if formatting my WD Elements External Hard Drive to exFAT requires the hardrive to be relatvely new (it is quite old) or would need some sort of compatibility label to be used with exFAT. It is currently NTFS and I am not sure if formatting it to exFAT may cause it to function incorrectly.

I am wanting the most compatible format for both Windows and Mac, so I believe exFAT is most appropriate.

Any advice?

It doesn't matter if it's internal or external or how old it is.

ellellell1 said:

Hi there

I am wondering if formatting my WD Elements External Hard Drive to exFAT requires the hardrive to be relatvely new (it is quite old) or would need some sort of compatibility label to be used with exFAT. It is currently NTFS and I am not sure if formatting it to exFAT may cause it to function incorrectly.

I am wanting the most compatible format for both Windows and Mac, so I believe exFAT is most appropriate.

Any advice?

Hi there

ANY file system can be written to an HDD -- it's just DATA. So long as you have an application that can create the File system and also have other applications that can read and write to it.

Size limitations e.g FAT16 etc are due to the file system not the disk hardware. !!

For example this application can create a whole slew of different file systems on a HDD.

So long as you can create the file system and the relevant HOST OS'es can read / write to it then it really doesn't matter what you choose -- although some file systems are more efficient than others.



Cheers
jimbo