55

What is the best filesystem to use cross-platform (Linux, Windows, OS X) which supports disk sizes of at least 2TB and file sizes >4GB?

I'm planning to use it on a USB drive on different computers.

Are there any filesystems that can be used on all the named OSes without installing additional drivers?

Zulakis
  • 1,644
  • 5
  • 19
  • 29
  • More about the environment? Read write? One machine? Network shares? – Austin T French May 19 '13 at 19:22
  • read/write support would be great. used as a usb-drive on different computers. – Zulakis May 19 '13 at 19:22
  • 5
    This question is not *not constructive*. There is a specific set of criteria, and filesystems support these criteria or don't. There's not an infinite set of answers either, and every answer will be backed up by facts, not opinion. – slhck May 19 '13 at 21:47
  • Interesting that this question is "not constructive" but it was exactly the question I was looking for an answer to, and it contained exactly the answer I needed. But what do I know about getting my questions answered. – karfus Dec 03 '22 at 22:48
  • Very constructive question. Thanks for asking it. – Seph Reed Dec 23 '22 at 17:52

2 Answers2

53

Look at "OS support" on the Comparison of filesystems page on Wikipedia. This lists OS support by file system.

As you can see, there is no file system that is covers all OS platforms, the closest being FAT16. FAT32 is a close 2nd, requiring 3rd party driver support for z/OS.

Since you require read/write support and large files and file systems, the best option would be NTFS. Obviously, Windows OSs support NTFS. Modern Linux kernels (2.2+) can read and write NTFS natively. OS X supports reading NTFS natively and writing with NTFS-3G.

SharpC
  • 593
  • 5
  • 8
Keltari
  • 71,875
  • 26
  • 179
  • 229
  • I'm tempted to point out that that table omits AmigaOS :) (That said, I'm giving you +1) – user May 20 '13 at 12:26
  • 4
    I'd like to propose exFAT as another solid option, mainly because getting Linux to read/write exFAT is easier than getting OSX to read/write NTFS. – Joel E Salas Jun 08 '13 at 02:19
  • 1
    @JoelESalas Agreed. exFAT works out of the box with OSX and Windows, and on Ubuntu all that is required is a simple `sudo apt-get -y install exfat-utils exfat-fuse` – user72923 Jun 15 '14 at 20:03
  • 14
    I would avoid exFAT. There's no backup of the file allocation table like FAT32 has; with the lack of journaling, one unsafe removal, or system freeze, during a write operation is going to hose the entire drive. – joe Sep 16 '14 at 15:50
  • 3
    +1 for the link to NFTS-3G. I didn't know there was an open-source NTFS driver for Mac OS. – spongessuck Mar 14 '16 at 19:38
  • 2
    @keltari while Linux 2.2+ has *limited* write support - see `Linux can reliably read NTFS and can overwrite existing files, but the Linux kernel can’t write new files to an NTFS partition.`, an excerpt from [this answer](http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/177978/how-does-linux-kernel-deal-with-windows-ntfs-filesystem), which also explains how linux reads / writes to NTFS in modern times. it's definitely not the kernel driver though. – stonecrusher Oct 21 '16 at 19:25
  • 1
    `NTFS` is supported by `linux`, but performance is **very** poor. – RedEyed Jan 05 '19 at 13:44
  • Paragon's NTFS3 driver supports full R/W on NTFS disks. It's included in Linux kernel since 5.15. See [NTFS3 in kernel.org](https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/next/filesystems/ntfs3.html) and [NTFS3 Linux driver FAQ in Paragon Software](https://www.paragon-software.com/home/ntfs3-driver-faq/). – Peregrino69 Mar 04 '23 at 20:47
  • "I would avoid exFAT." -- objections against exFAT when compared to FAT32 is mostly a myth but I fear it will be around for the years to come non-the-less. – Joep van Steen Mar 05 '23 at 01:04
1

exFAT is now supported as R&W by Android (via the Linux kernel), macOS, and Windows. I believe that that amount of support is able to be reasonably construed as support by every important OS.

rokejulianlockhart
  • 75
  • 8