How Do You Plan to Use Your USB Drive?īasically, the most important considerations regarding your choice of a file system for your USB drive are which operating systems you plan to use it with and how large the files you will most likely transfer are. Windows, MacOS, Linux) can work with various file systems (natively or through third-party tools).Īlso read: How to Repair a Corrupted USB Drive in Linux 2. Each of the major operating systems (e.g.

A file system manages operations such as copying, moving, and deleting files on a drive.Ī file system is different from an operating system – in a sense, a file system runs atop an operating system and depends on it for many operations with the underlying hardware. A file system is a piece of software that controls how data on a media is stored and retrieved. Here are some of the most important considerations before choosing a filesystem for a USB drive.įirst, before we go any further, let’s clarify what a file system is. While there isn’t a single best file system for USB drives in general, depending on what you use the USB drive for, one file system could be better than the rest.

When you get a new USB drive and are about to format it before its first use, you may be wondering which of the available options, a.k.a.