I've been experimenting with Linux Mint on an old laptop that just couldn't keep up with Windows 11 anymore. Instead of cloning or switching out the HDD, I decided to let it gather dust—though it has a nice big 17" screen and a DVD drive, the speakers are not great. I recently bought a new laptop, which was a bit of an impulse buy, but it should last me a long time just like my old one did. Right now, I'm using it to type this! I cloned my Windows install to a larger NVMe drive and installed Bazzite on the original SSD. All is well, but the Bazzite drive is only 500GB, so I found an old PS4 HDD and a SATA cable to add more storage. Now I'm wondering, how should I format this HDD? I initially formatted it as NTFS on Windows to use with Bazzite, but now I want to use it for data storage like documents and music. I want to sync my music with my phone while traveling, and I need it to work well between both Linux and Windows. Just to be clear, I have three separate drives, so I can manage them easily. I'm okay with carrying around extra external drives if I need to, but I need some advice on the best file system for my needs.
1 Answer
To keep it simple, I'd recommend using exFAT for your internal HDD. It's pretty much the best choice for sharing files between Linux and Windows. While NTFS can work too, many Android devices struggle to read it, which might make syncing your music a hassle. ExFAT has no major file size restrictions unlike FAT32, which has that annoying 4GB limit.
Absolutely, I think exFAT is the way to go for your use case. It strikes a good balance between compatibility and performance.
ExFAT really does beat FAT32, especially if you're planning to handle larger files. Just make sure to use a good media player like MusicBee, which should manage your music syncing without too much hassle. Seriously, why do phones have such slow USB speeds? It's so frustrating trying to connect and browse through them on Windows!