You have to ask yourself, do I need to use those characters, or do I need individual file sizes to be higher than 4GB each.
The following reserved characters are forbidden on NTFS files/names: (greater than) Only problem with NTFS is that it does not allow the following characters, which can be a problem on Linux and OSX, but obviously not on Windows: It also has very limited permission and ACL support for those who need to isolate different users from certain files. ExFAT has no file system-level encryption or compression support, and, like FAT32 before it, there is no journaling built into the exFAT file system. The problem with ExFat (even though others suggested it, is the 4GB file size limit.
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. 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.
While you can fix minor problems on all three file systems with fsck, you will have to use MS Windows to fix anything major. Use the Add ( +) option to create a new partition and choose the Name, Format, and Size for each partition by selecting it in the diagram.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.įAT32. Read/write on all three systems. Not journaled. File size < 4G.ĮxFAT. Read/write on all three systems. Not journaled. Select your external drive from the sidebar and click the Partition button. If you can't find it, press Cmd + Space to search for Disk Utility using Spotlight. Then go to Applications > Utilities and launch Disk Utility. How to Partition Your External DriveĬonnect your external hard drive to your Mac. If you can spare more space, definitely do so. However, you shouldn't go smaller than double the size of your Mac.įor example, if you have a 128GB MacBook, you should allocate at least 256GB for Time Machine backups. If you don't want years' worth of backups, you can reduce this size as you see fit. We recommend that you allow two to four times the size of your Mac's internal drive.
When you partition your hard drive, you get to choose how much space to allocate for your Time Machine backups. You can make a Time Machine backup after partitioning the drive, but your backup history will restart from that point forward. That means you may lose any existing Time Machine backups. Unfortunately, creating a new partition often erases your external drive.
You even need to eject each partition separately before you can safely unplug your drive. They have distinct names, varying amounts of storage, and can use different formats. Click on the Start menu and type 'partitions.' You should see an option appear to 'Create and Format Hard Disk Partitions.' Select it, and wait for the window to load. This is because the drive will carry out many more read and write actions as you save, edit, and delete extra files.Īfter you partition a hard drive, your Mac sees each partition as a separate drive. If you choose to use your Time Machine drive as external storage, you might shorten its lifespan by doing so. Your external hard drive is no exception it has moving parts that read and write data, which can give out over time. The more you use a mechanical item, the more likely it is to fail. Be Careful When Storing Files on Your Time Machine Drive You might not care to have extensive backups of files you deleted years ago, in which case there are better uses for your external drive. The downside to Time Machine's historic backups is that the oldest files remain on your drive until it runs out of storage. Obviously, that isn't particularly useful. With this method, you'd have no way to retrieve a deleted file if you already made a new backup. In contrast, the alternative to historic backups is to overwrite the previous files every time you back up your Mac. Thanks to these historic backups, you can travel back in time to restore your Mac's data from days, weeks, or months ago. This means it keeps older copies of files even after you edit or delete them, until a time when you need more storage for newer backups. Time Machine works by creating historic backups of your Mac.