Essentially, it’s a file system that’s both readable and writable on any modern Mac or Windows machine (sorry, XP users). FAT32 works for both OSes, but has a 4GB size limit per file, so it isn’t ideal.ĮxFAT has been around for a while, but we’ve never really talked about it. Windows’ default NTFS is only readable on OS X, not writable, and Windows computers can’t even read Mac-formatted HFS+ drives. Instead of reformatting it all the time, just use the much more platform-independent exFAT and never format it again. Using an external drive between Mac and Windows computers can be a hassle, since you constantly have to reformat it to fit which computer you’re using it on.
