USB drive format, NTFS vs. FAT32

NTFS (New Technology File System) is a proprietary file system developed by Microsoft Corporation, and hence you may have to install additional programs on Linux / Mac in order to view partitions formatted with NTFS (like ntfs-3g).

FAT32 formatting is used to be recognised in all operating systems and there is a limit of 4 GB file in this case. I.e., you can't create a single file greater than 4 GB in FAT32 whereas you can create files larger than 4 GB in NTFS.

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Well, I think it highly depends on the size and capacity of your flash drive, and what operating systems you want it to be supported by, and what security features you might require. As a general rule, and for regular USB flash memories, it would be the best to format them in FAT32, considering their capacity, and if you want all operating systems to easily support them. For more information you could refer to these articles:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_file_systems
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTFS
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat32#FAT32
http://cquirke.mvps.org/ntfs.htm

NTFS is a journaling file system, so it'll cause some wearout to the USB drive, somehow reducing the drive's life expectancy. It's now supported by all modern OSes, but some old Linux or MacOS PCs might need to install the ntfs-3g driver.

FAT32 is supported by all operating systems, but it has a maximum 4 GB file size limit.

So none of them are good for USB drives. exFAT is the most suitable one because it's specifically designed for flash drives and is now supported by (almost) all operating systems.