Best Format For External Drive Mac OS Extended
Best Format For External Drive Portable Flash Drive

You can still use either file system for your hard drives and attached storage devices, with both having their own pros and cons.

Best Format For External Drive Mac OS Extended

The newer APFS format is better for some types of drives, including SSDs, while Mac OS Extended is great for older drives and macOS versions.

Heres a run-through of the pros and cons of both to help you decide.

Thats exactly what you get with the now-default Apple File System (APFS) that Mac devices have been using since macOS 10.13 High Sierra was launched in 2017.

Its also used with other Apple operating systems including iOS.

For example, file corruption is significantly reduced compared to Mac OS Extended.

If you have an older Mac, youll need to keep using Mac OS Extended or use an alternative like ExFAT instead.

For most users, however, APFS is the only file system theyll need or want to usebut only if theyre (only) using modern Mac devices.

Best Format For External Drive Portable Flash Drive

Youll need to use HFS if you plan on formatting a second hard drive or portable flash drive for use as a Time Machine backupAPFS drives wont work.

Other than functionality, however, there are still a few legitimate reasons why youd choose HFS over APFSthe biggest reason depends on the type of drive you use.

If youre using an older, mechanical drive with a disk platter, those enhancements may seem largely minimal or non-existent.

You can format a drive with HFS using the macOS Disk Utility app, which you can launch from the Launchpad ( Other Disk Utility ).

Likewise, macOS can read newer Windows NTFS drives, but not write to them.

Newer macOS installations should use APFS by default, and if youre formatting an external drive, APFS is the faster and better option for most users.

If you need a cross-platform option, consider using ExFAT for your drive insteadboth Windows and macOS can read these drives without any additional software.

In a past life, Ben was a college lecturer in the UK, training teens and adults.

Since leaving the classroom, Ben has taken his teaching experience and applied it to writing tech how-to guides and tutorials, specialising in Linux, Windows, and Android.

He has a degree in History and a postgraduate qualification in Computing.

I graduated from Emory University with a degree in Computer Science and Mathematics.