Is APFS faster than ExFAT for a Macbook external hard drive?

Is formatting an external hard drive using APFS (Apple File System) better than ExFAT (Microsoft's cross-platform disk solution). I purchased a new external SSD hard drive for my MacBook. I wanted to have the fastest possible performance but also considered the benefits to APFS as well as ExFAT disk formatting. I ran some real world tests to find out what the performance difference was between APFS and ExFat on my Crucial 2TB external SSD. The same principles could be applied to NTFS and ExFAT when considering using a drive with a Windows computer.

[@mo.1381]

Thank you for your time , best wishes

[@parnell2014]

Thanks, I needed this info and your video clarified some issues for me. Much appreciated!

[@shadsluiter]

Glad it was helpful!

[@WeisterXDprogrammer]

amazing video!!!! thanks for the information I really need this

[@shadsluiter]

Glad it was helpful! What did you configure on your machine?

[@tweakciti]

Informative! Thank you

[@SToad]

Thank you! For cross platform exFAT is best obviously, but was wondering if I would get a performance hit, since I tend to use APFS encrypted on all my drives

[@Mehwhatevr]

what about other things like cluster size. I had a file that was 50GB and the size on disk was like 120GB. does APFS handle this better than exfat?

[@prayers8929]

I don't know why but I have a ZikeDrive USB4 SSD Enclosure with a 990 PRO PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD 2TB and when I formatted it to ExFat I got 1341.9 (write) and 2341.1 (read) speeds. Then I tried formatting it to APFS and I got 2011.9 (write) and 3123.2 (read) speeds. Why do you think that might be? I’m using the MacBook Pro with the M1 Max Chip and it has 3 Thunderbolt 4 ports. The cable I use is USB4 Gen3 40Gbps USB-C to USB-C cable.

[@WeisterXDprogrammer]

looking forward to the next video jeje Question do you have a tutorial of how to have a vistua machine on your mac 🖥️ easy? or if free ect ect , my window laptop is dead now after 7 years I can’t afford a new one now si I wonder I is better to have a virtual machine in the meantime, I use a work pc but my room is to cluster haha 😂

[@shadsluiter]

Virtual machines work well on high-end computers with a lot of ram. It may be less expensive to purchase an additional old computer. A low end macbook will work with Windows on Bootcamp which will run Windows faster than through a virtual machine.

[@patroldsk]

well deserved "thumb up" :)

[@Bangy]

It seems like you have ignored external hard drives, I mean actual external rotational hard disk drives.
They are significantly slower with APFS vs other file systems in my testing.

[@breakingtwitting]

avoid apple proprietary crap, exfat been like forever. can be sure it works everywhere without any issues