Formatting a 1TB External HDD

[DannyM]

Hey folks,

I've just bought a 1TB external hard disk drive.

I am wanting to format it to get the best performance out of it. What filesystem would you recommend? Also when formatting with windows, what Alocation Unit Size should I be using?

Thanks!

[kalniel]

NTFS, leave everything else to auto or defaults.

[alsenior]

+1 on ntfs. just leave at default for everything. messing with thinks like allocation size is only beneficial if what your putting on the benefits from it. for most people the difference is none existent

[peterb]

If you are using exclusively on Windows systems, stay with NTFS and the default settings. That way you get all the benefits of the NTFS system (permissions and so on). If you need to share with a Mac system, then you probably better using FAT32. Remember that Windows reserves about 12.5% of the available space on the drive (or partition) for the NTFS Master file table. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/174619

If you are going to use it exclusively on a Linux system, then Ext3 will be fine for general use. If you are going to use it for applications where other file systems would be better, you probably wouldn't be asking the question in the first place!

[Valvo]

I would use an NTFS and leave a bit of hard drive space (like 50 gb) free incase you might want to backup some files and reformat again.