Hi there, Which formatting should I use to format a new external 4 TB HD? I'm on Win 7, but it will be used on a Win 10 computer. The articles all say something different. And I think I read somewhere that I shouldn't partition it. Is that correct? Thanks
Depends on the OS, for Win, GPT with NTFS filesystem. Multi-partitioning should be no problem with external hard disks, entirely depends on how you want to use it. Fun fact, you are always partition all hard disks, even if it is only one partition per disk. Unpartitioned hard disks can't be used.
Carlos is correct. For Windows, GPT with NTFS. I would assume it came formatted exFat which in my opinion sux.
If all devices that you connect the hdd are NTFS compatible, then go with NTFS only. Copying, moving, repairing on NTFS is easy than exFat. Even desktop search engines prefer NTFS and do no list files from exFat automatically.
Why GPT? Because 4TB hard disks are too big, MBR can only address around 2.3TB as it uses 32bit address space. Why NTFS? Performance, security, reliability. Performance: Performs better even with write caching disabled (=optimized for fast removal, default setting). All FAT filesystems are extremely slow with write cache off. Security: Access Control Lists (ACL) security is NOT available on FAT filesystems. Reliability: Journaling and transaction replay or -rollback is not available on FAT filesystems. FAT with write cache on (=optimized for quick access) just begs for eventual catastrophic data loss.
Actually, for spinning disks using Restore points and being defragmented often, a clustersize of 16K is better, as otherwise, the Shadow Copy Service tends to delete your Restore points upon defragmentation. On the other hand, at least the on-the-fly compression (NTFS compression) requires 4K clusters, so, if compression is desired, 4K it is. That's also another downside of large exFAT disks, the clustersizes can be huge (128K), resulting in plenty of slack space being lost.
And not only the wasted space issue, there are a lot, a huge number of subreddit threads (and comments inside them) that tell the instability, problematic and unreliable about exFAT. It's simply not recommended nowadays (unless a user wants to have macOS write-compatibility). NTFS, ext4, btrfs are very stable. Another example, is the great amount of users that complain about Data Lost in VeraCrypt Container/Partition (Not BitLocker because NTFS is obligatory), or Portable Devices (USB, microSD, External HDD). They don't seem to realize that exFAT was the guilty of the damaged file system because of bad ejection, energy/electricity lost and some stupid things of having a Non-Journaling (or Non-Copy-on-Write, like btrfs) file system. The header gets damaged, and they cannot mount the containers anymore.
Wow, I got all of these comments too late. I did format it with NTFS last night on my Win 7, then moved it to the Win 10 & it threw an error. I think the backup company reformatted it again & I PRAY that he did NTFS b/c he screwed up & put a G drive on the external that I asked him to rename it to G since that's what it was before, not to put ANOTHER G folder on the drive. SMH Now I have to move all of the data over once it's finished which will take another 2 days min. I only found out a few hours ago sigh Thanks to everyone.
GPT vs. MBR choice is normally offered upon initialization, however, as it is 4TB, there is no choice and GPT is used automatically. Clustersize is a possible choice when formatting the volume, with 4K being the default for NTFS.
Reformat it on the Win 10. In explorer right click on the drive and select "Format". It will automatically be formatted as a GPT drive with NTFS as the default and 4K Clustersize.