# Read/Write exFAT HDD



## cazua (Dec 12, 2006)

Hi, I just jumped ship to Mac OS X from Windows. I now own a MacBook Pro 15.4" running Mountain Lion. As my HDDs are all NTFS formatted, by default I could not write on those HDDs in OS X.

I want to be able to write files that are larger than 4GB onto my HDD, and able to read/write data on both Windows and OS X. So I read about formatting my HDD to exFAT instead of the old FAT32.

My question is, is exFAT stable/reliable as of today?


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## sinclair_tm (Mar 11, 2005)

I'm actually not familiar with that format, so I don't know. What files in that size do you want to write? I think most programs actually cut the file internally into 4GB chunks, at least a couple of video programs I used did.


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## cazua (Dec 12, 2006)

I see. Hmm, video files most likely.

Hopefully someone out there could help~ Hehe


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## LMiller7 (Jun 21, 2010)

exFAT does support files larger than 4 GB. It has been supported on Windows since Vista SP1 but only more recently on the Mac, apparently 10.6.5 and later. It seems to be reliable on Windows but I have no experience on the Mac. I have heard of compatibility issues for drives formatted on the Mac.

See this for more information:
exFAT - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


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