Comment by nerdsniper
3 months ago
These days most of them seem to work just fine on Linux, Windows, and Mac. I use several brands across all 3 and never had an issue. I like the DOCKCASE Visual Smart ($40) or Explorer Edition ($50). They have large capacitors to provide 10 seconds of power loss protection, support 10Gbps USB speeds, and have a second USB port just for power which makes it compatible with SSD's that draw a lot of power. I like the info on the little screens because I swap SSD's in/out frequently. There are cheaper ones that work fine too - the "SABRENT USB 3.2 Type-C Tool-Free Enclosure" ($30) is nice for, well, not needing a screwdriver to swap out the drive - but it might not deliver enough power for some overkill SSD like the (now Sandisk) WD Black SN8100 - but the DockCase will, as long as you also plug in an auxiliary power USB cable.
A drive like the Patriot Memory P400 Lite is very low power, so it works with cheaper enclosures or USB ports that don't deliver as much power to the peripheral. It also generates less heat, which can help sustain performance depending on the enclosure and environment.
Which filesystem do you use that handles large disks and can be mounted by Linux, Windows, and Mac?
The exFAT suggested below is really not resilient enough that I could trust GBs of data on it. Easily gets corrupted.
If you don't need to use it on Mac/Windows, use a FS like BTRFS with checksumming feature.
Don't use any FS that doesn't have checksum feature as silent bitrot is real.
So, nothing? Unbelievable
Ext4 and NTFS. FUSE for linux and Paragon Software for MacOS. Though often I have three partitions, so I use APFS, NTFS, and Ext4 on the same drive.
A related challenge is encryption of removable flash storage.
Linux has FUSE read-only support for decrypting APFS. iOS can read/write encrypted APFS that is formatted on macOS.
Would be nice to have encrypted ZFS support on multiple platforms, including iOS and Android.
I have experience with ext4 not through deliberate choice but through circumstance.
ext4 can't be natively mounted in Mac and Windows but you can install third party software and still mount it from the command line easily. And of course ext4 works fine with Linux natively.
I don't know if you can install the Mac OS or Windows OS on an ext4 drive and directly boot from it, however.
ExFAT is becoming a good option on all three. Windows and MacOS have native support, and more and more Linux distros are getting support as well I believe.
NTFS