There is no right size, there are tradeoffs, but for us, it works just fine.įor questions #2, I’ve always been concerned that I may be limiting my speed when I pick the exFAT format vs.
It’s the default the computer picks for me and I’ve read several places where it was at least alluded to being a good size. So when I reformat to exFAT, I typically pick 256 kilobytes for the Allocation unit size. These aren’t the same!!! 1 kilobyte = 1000 bytes (or 1024 bytes depending on context). First, a lot of people confuse the default NTFS file size of 4096 bytes with the exFAT option of 4096 kilobytes. Now, the question I’ve always had was: 1) What allocation unit size should I pick for exFAT? and 2) Am I loosing read/write speed when I pick exFAT over NTFS?įor question #1, doing a Google search gives you some answers, but also leaves you with a lot of head scratching. To do this, we reformat all our drives to exFAT which allows us to read and write to the drives using either a PC or a Mac. It also means that they need to work on both PC’s and Mac’s. We’re constantly handing projects off to different people to work on different parts and that means these projects need to be mobile.
Warning! Technical stuff ahead! We use a lot of external drives for media work and storage.
