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    Best file system for SDXC card in MBA?

    Discussion in 'Apple and Mac OS X' started by MAA83, Mar 23, 2013.

  1. MAA83

    MAA83 Notebook Evangelist

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    I purchased a 64gb san disk sdxc card and it will be used mostly to store documents and video files. What file system will give me the best performance in terms of read speed? It came as ExFat, but from what little I've found online, it seems that performance increases (especially when handling a large quantity of smaller files) when you re-format it to Mac OS Extended Journaled.

    ANyone have experience with this? Is there a benchmarking utility for osx I can use to just test it after trying different file systems? Like an HD Tune equivalent for macs?
     
    MAA83, Mar 23, 2013
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  2. doh123

    doh123 Without ME its just AWESO

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    Mac OS Extended... (HFS+) may be faster with OSX, but remember that any machine not running OSX will not be able to read/write to it.

    exFat may not be the fastest in the world, but for a sd card, I doubt you'd notice a difference in speed, and ExFat is usually best for compatibility with pretty much every OS out there.
     
    doh123, Mar 23, 2013
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  3. saturnotaku

    saturnotaku Notebook Nobel Laureate

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    The speed of an SD card will also be limited by the bus of the reader, probably more than the file system itself. Most XC cards come formatted as exFAT out of the box for the sake of compatibility.
     
    saturnotaku, Mar 24, 2013
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  4. DJACID

    DJACID Notebook Evangelist

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    I currently do the same thing but have kept it as exfat so it's easier for me to use it on both windows and mac,
    But if you don't or won't be using it with windows then go with macs native format...
     
    DJACID, Mar 26, 2013
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