Which filesystem do you recommend for an external Mac HD?

Since we’re talking about Mac, which of the filesystems should I use on an external hard drive (non-SSD), which I’ll be using with my Mac but occasionally may also use it with other operating systems.

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After reading Which Mac File System Is Best for an External Drive?, I decided to use exFAT on my external drive.

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I personally use APFS and always encrypt my external drives and they are all SSDs - but I only use them with Macs.

If you’re using a non-ssd non-encrypted drive and with other operating systems I think any of the common file systems (HFS+, FAT32, ExFAT etc) are a good choice :smiley:

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HFS+ can be used on all 3 major OSes and is much better than exFAT in every way.

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I liked HFS+ Dimi - I seem to get odd slow downs since Apple changed to APFS but I’m not sure that it’s due to the file system or some sort of OS blocking :confused:

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Well, we’re talking something you can use easily when moving from computer to computer. I wouldn’t expect best in class performance though, that’s not how modern software is done – or how a legacy software is maintained.

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