Formatting Blank Storage Drive for both Linux and Windows 10

Eugor

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What file system is the best to use for formatting a blank drive for storage of files that will be created, modified, read, and moved using both Windows 10 and Linux Mint 19.1 xfce ?

Should the formatting be done from windows or from linux, or will either one work just fine?

Don't know if it matters , but file types will be a wide mix across the board. anything from pdf, dwg, dxg, dfx, jpeg, pptx, xlsx, mp3, wma etc..
 


Fat32 will work, format the drive using windows or Linux, mint will be able to open the most windows file types.
 
FAT32 is a good overall choice, but its biggest disadvantage these days is that it has a file size limit of 4GB. That can sometimes be too limiting with videos and some .iso files, for example. If you think you may need some files to be bigger than 4GB, then NTFS would probably be the best choice. You can format your drive from either Windows or Linux and it should work fine.

Cheers
 
Hi Hooded One - a bit late for the show

But I have a dedicated partition or two I use, rather than a whole drive. (Whole drives are for Linuxes, Mate :))

On my Western Digital My Book 4 TB powered external HDD, which also houses about 35 Linux.

It includes Timeshift for the Distros - formatted to EXT4 - 500 GB

Win2Lin2Win - about 2 or so GB - NTFS mostly for documents and

BurnFromWin - say 20 GB - NTFS - I flick some downloaded isos's there and then try out Windows burning solutions to help here.

Works for me

Cheers

Wiz
 
I know it's a bit late but I wanted to put this out there anyway. I have several drives that I've formatting using Linux to ext4. Then afterwards wanted to use them on a Windows computer, and changed to format to fat32, but Windows wouldn't recognize them anymore. Actually it would, but it wouldn't mount them saying there was some sort of error and wouldn't give me the ability to repair or reformat. So I'd say if you need it for Windows, format it in Windows. Linux is much more understanding and will still use it.
 
Hi Hooded One - a bit late for the show

But I have a dedicated partition or two I use, rather than a whole drive. (Whole drives are for Linuxes, Mate :))

On my Western Digital My Book 4 TB powered external HDD, which also houses about 35 Linux.

It includes Timeshift for the Distros - formatted to EXT4 - 500 GB

Win2Lin2Win - about 2 or so GB - NTFS mostly for documents and

BurnFromWin - say 20 GB - NTFS - I flick some downloaded isos's there and then try out Windows burning solutions to help here.

Works for me

Cheers

Wiz
Many thanks Wizard.
This helps me understand drives, partitions, and formatting better. I need to grab a drive and start getting familiar with setting up multiple partitions, with various formatting.
 

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