Reccomended format for external hard drive?
Want to use an external hard drive to transfer between my Bazzite OS Steam Deck and Windows 10 laptop. What format should I make it? exFAT? NTFS?
23 Replies
strictly transferring file exfat is fine and ntfs should work too but have some quirks in linux, if you want to share game then btrfs + winbtrfs so windows can use it
How to format to btrfs + winbtrfs?
format it in linux
isntall winbtrfs in windows
How to format in linux?
use kde partition manager or gnome disk
btw i mean share steam game library
copying game file will work in exfat/ntfs
dont use ntfs
What do I use?
ext4 or btrfs
preferably btrfs
OK, I installed winbtrfs, now where do I find it on my computer?
@asen23
just mount the drive?
Then what? I can't format it to winbtfrs if I don't know where the program I installed is.
You format it from Linux, not from Windows
WinBTRFS is for mounting it and all the info for that is in their readme
You'll want to read it carefully
OK, how to install winbtrfs on Linux/SteamOS, then?
You don't need to, BTRFS support is built-in
Just need to format your drive as BTRFS
OK, my external hard drive is formatted to btrfs, but windows isn't reading it, even after I installed winbtrfs through Chocoloatey.
@Kyle Gospo You ok?
iirc the chocolatey install doesn't work
just use the installer in their releases instead
Where can I find that installer?
winbtrfs github
If you're talking about that btrfs.inf file, it doesn't work.
and why is that?
I had the drive formatted to btrfs, and it won't show the contents, even after restarting my laptop.
works on my machine, you'll need to open an issue w/ the WinBTRFS project and figure out what's up then
Figured it out. Had to disable Secure Boot.
And after that, I had to click on "My PC" for all of the drives to show.
@Kyle Gospo @asen23 @mike Thank you all for helping.