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I'm formatting (a single partition on) my USB drive, for read-write use on multiple computers - at the very least Windows (XP and up), Mac OS (not sure which versions) and Linux (distributions which are no more than, say, 4 years old). In the olden days I would probably use FAT32, which I remember to be quite widely supported - but that has a 4GB file limit.

So, in this day and age, and for the OSes I mentioned (perhaps even others) - which filesystem should I choose? My current best guess is NTFS, since I know the Linux support is decent (or better) and for Windows it's native. Is there a better choice?

Notes:

  • Unlike this question, I can't accept the 4GB file limit. Also, the answer there suggests filesystems which typically require installing third-party drivers or have other issues.
  • I'm not interested in performance/security/fault tolerance or other such features, just portability.
  • I'm not asking which filesystem is "better", I just want to maximize the spectrum of systems I can use my USB drive with, without having to install drivers or update the OS.
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einpoklum
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    @DanielB: Unfortunately, not really, since that question does not have >4GB support requirement which precludes FAT. The accepted answer there does not actually answer my question. – einpoklum Jan 14 '17 at 20:17
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    Nothing has changed. If you absolutely want support for large files, the answer is simply: No. Linux doesn't do exFAT (which is super terrible with small files by the way) and most likely won't for years to come. – Daniel B Jan 14 '17 at 22:02

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If your emphasis is on maximum compatibility for your USB drive, I utilize exFAT on mine.

Like NTFS, exFAT has very large file size and partition size limits. This means you can store files that are larger than 4 GB apiece on a flash drive or SD card if it’s formatted with exFAT. exFAT is a strict upgrade over FAT32, and should be the best choice for external drives where you want a lightweight file system without FAT32’s file size limits.

exFAT is also more compatible than NTFS. While Mac OS X includes only read-only support for NTFS, Macs offer full read-write support for exFAT.

(Source)

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Run5k
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  • Do most Linux distributions support it "out of the box"? – einpoklum Jan 14 '17 at 21:15
  • I am certainly not a Linux subject matter expert, but I think it is safe to say that *most* distributions don't support exFAT out-of-the-box. While the capability to [natively support exFAT](http://news.softpedia.com/news/Native-exFAT-Support-Finally-Arrives-on-Linux-365770.shtml) may be there, any shortfalls can usually be mitigated by installing the `exfat-fuse` and `exfat-utils` packages on your preferred distro. The bottom line is that there really isn't an ideal USB drive OS solution, but from my perspective **exFAT** offers the most compatibility across the spectrum of possibilities. – Run5k Jan 14 '17 at 21:42
  • In that case, it is inferior to NTFS: It requires root access (or a rather complicated procedure) to mount. That's not acceptable. – einpoklum Jan 14 '17 at 22:42