I just purchased a new MY Book High Capacity drive. I noticed it is formatted as exFAT. Is it safe to change it to NTFS? I haven’t put anything on the drive yet so I am not concerned about data loss.
My system is running Windows 10 Pro.
It is safe to format it as NTFS since you have no data on the drive yet.
The benefit of exFAT is the file system/format is readable by wider range of devices and computers. Windows / Mac and other Media Devices (Media Players/Smart TV’s/ Games Consoles etc) support it.
But, sure you can re-format to NTFS if you wish to only use it for Windows … but it’ll also be fine as exFAT as well.
Your choice.
Make sure you select GPT (GUID Partition Table) when formatting if it asks either … MBR or GPT ?
Thank you. I will only use Windows with this drive so changing to NTFS isn’t going to be a problem from that perspective. My primary reason for wanting to change is the file system’s ability (or lack thereof) to maximize cluster size. I don’t know much about exFAT but know that FAT, FAT32, etc are more limited in this regard than NTFS.
And thanks for the reminder about GPT vs. MBR. I did remember but appreciate the reminder and hope any one else reading this will find it helpful.
