Crucial X6 SSD.....exFAT or NTFS

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Hi all

I bought an x6 2TB capacity on the Amazon Prime day offer and @hunnymonster also mentioned doing so on that Prime Day thread. So the feedback I seek might be of interest to him as well?

I only managed to collect it today....so late to come and ask about it :)

I find it is formatted 'out of the box' as exFAT. Now I am a W10 user and of course all the internal drives are NTFS (actually I think that some of my external HDDs are NTFS............but could be FAT32?). But back to the point of this post.

What is best to do, leave it as exFAT or reformat to NTFS ???

What are the benefits and/or disadvantages of either file structure for an external SSD?

Many thanks in advance for those in the know who can throw some light on this aspect of owning external SSDs :)
 
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I've stuck to exFAT because it's most compatible with my constellation of devices (where NTFS read/write isn't necessarily an available choice on all)

Downside: no possibility of native encryption (eg. Bitlocker)
 
NTFS is a more robust file system. The only advantage I can think of for exFAT is, as Jason says, compatibility if you're likely to use it with non-Windoze devices.
I have a 2GB X8 that lives in my laptop bag and I've re-formatted it as NTFS.
 
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Thanks both for the insights :)

My usage is purely as backup storage and as such the potential for me to need to access it on a Mac or Linux device is zero.

So it does look like NTFS (for me) is the way to go :D Oh, it is one tiny 'drive'!

PS though I also have two Crucial MX series SSDs in my PC I don't recall now coming across the SSD management/monitoring program "Crucial Storage Executive". Do either of you guys @hunnymonster and @Snapsh0t have any experience of it and does it work with the x6 and x8 drives?

NB Like any programs, there are some poor experience reports of it not behaving itself......though most I have read are for earlier versions and the auto update process!
 
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I tend to shy away from that sort of thing - what is it actually offering over and above what the OS does? Are those features something you want?
 
I only use it to check for firmware updates and just haven't even thought about it for the X8.
 
chrism_scotland said:
How small (physically) is the drive? Trying to decide between this or the very similar SanDisk one!
Click to expand...

I will measure it when back at the PC.....but the retail packaging was small and when I opened it I was surprised how small it is!
 
exfat is only supposed to be used for one off file transfers and not for any mission critical storage. In fact due to patents and other restrictions it is like the very last choice. On Windows machines it has to NTFS, Linux - ext4, Mac - their HFS+ or AFPS. It is a bit harder when you have to share between either of them, in which case NTFS still may come out as the least troublesome solution.
 
Defo NTFS as people say it is a very robust file system and can support encryption if required.
 
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