best FileSystem format for external hard drive

[xsetiadi]

hai, im planning to upgrade my local media server to use an external hard drive attached using hard drive docking on USB 3.0

what I'm confused about is. what is the best FileSystem format for my hard drive? I'm not planning to unmount and use the hard drive to another PC (for example: windows PC)

So I'm ready to format it with FileSystem that fully optimizes on Linux (I'm using armbian noble)

 

so ext4 or xfs? I hear xfs is better for copying large file sizes. my casual use is downloading movies, and watching it on jellyfin. or maybe I'm just using ext4?

Edited July 24 by xsetiadi

[Marco Schirrmeister]

I would go with, like you wrote, ext4 or xfs. If something breaks, you can still mount the disk on any other linux system without any issue.

Ext4 should also not have any problems with big file sizes. I am running xfs without any problems since years. Even if there was a hard crash, the filesystem could easily be mounted since nothing really happened on it or the recovery was smooth.

 

I would probabyl still argue that ext4 is even more robust. For a simple disk to store some data it might still be the best choise.