Formatting External Drives for Mac and PC Compatibility

Question

Which is the best method for formatting an external hard drive compatible with Mac OS and Windows operating systems?

Answer 1

When the external disk drive is planned to be used with the MAC operating system and with Windows operated PCs, exFAT would be the recommended formatting for the external disk drive. This file system can be read by both types of operating systems and its speed performance, if the disk is formatted in Mac, should be approximately the same as APFS. However, as a rule, it is always desirable to verify speeds after formatting in order to determine that speeds are within some reasonable range.

Comments

I made a external Bootable Hard Drive for my late 2013 iMac. my question is can I take my external Bootable hard drive one iMac late 2013 i5 intel to another iMac late 2013 i9 intel both are running Catilina 10.15.7 ? two different machine but same operation systems

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I have had issues moving large files to external nvme drives formatted in exfat.

They copy to the device but won’t open. You can then copy the files back to the Mac or even a PC and the file won’t open.

I don’t know if this happens when the external nvme is formatted using Apple’ s proprietary file system.

I do know that copying the files to a slower usb device such as a Samsung Bar series usb thumb drive did result in the files being able to be opened, played, and recopied onto other devices.

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I wonder if this can be updated for the M2 Mac Mini Pro with 16 or 32 GB, but also for other memory chips such as Samsung 990 Pro, or other drives that maybe 4TB if possible.  In addition is it possible to use the Hynex Chips, and why those may not work?  Can if its suitable to format it for Windows and Mac and still have no compatibility issues?   What is the Mac Mini Pro M2 internal SSD format anyway?