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ExFAT formatted USB drive solves this problem beautifully. In such a situation, your USB drives need to use a file system that is compatible with both operating systems. You continuously use a flash drive between Windows and Mac.
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In such a situation, you need to format the USB to exFAT to accommodate large file sizes. As already mentioned, the FAT32 file system has a file limit size of 4GB. exFAT formatted USB drive has no realistic partition size limits.įrom the above descriptions of the three of the main file systems, it becomes immediately apparent why you would need to format a flash drive to exFAT. The system has a file limit size of approximately 16 exabytes (over 1 billion gigabytes!) and is compatible with both Windows and Mac. It was created by Microsoft to replace FAT32 and address its limitations. exFAT: exFAT is an acronym for the Extended File Allocation Table.
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NTFS is compatible with Windows but files can only be opened in read-only mode in Mac and some Linux distributions. It originally debuted in Windows NT and later in Windows XP. NTFS has a huge file size and partition limits that are theoretically impossible to surpass.
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FAT is an acronym for File Allocation Table.
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