How to move files to pendrive (NTFS/FAT)?

Question

I'm using Macbook (Yosemite) as my main computer right now, I'm downloading a lot of movies and whatnot from the internet on my Mac and I want to move them to my pendrive so I will be able to watch them on my Windows PC / TV.

The problem is I don't know how to move files from OS X so they will be recognized by other systems. I've been testing exFAT but it's not supported by most (all?) TVs. I've been looking for stuff like FREENTFS, but this doesn't work (even breaks) Yosemite.

Answer 1

FAT32 is generally a good choice as just about everything supports it. You may run into a problem with FAT32 though. It's maximum file size is 4GB, which might be an issue with some movie files, and the maximum volume size is 32GB.

If those limitations are acceptable that would be my recommendation.

Answer 2

ExFAT is definitely the choice for both macOS and Windows, but maybe not the TVs (maybe few support this). FAT32 has a size limitation of 4GB on a single file. So, if you are dealing with movie files, FAT32 is definitely not a good idea. (I didn’t know this a long time ago, so what happened to me was it allowed me to copy the files that are bigger than the limitation onto the drive but once I ejected and remounted it back, the files are corrupted)

So, we’ve come to the conclusion that NTFS is a good choice for storing movie files on a pen drive so that they are readable on all devices (macOS, Windows, TVs). The only problem with NTFS is that you have to install a driver on your Mac in order to grant your Mac the ability to write on an NTFS drive (since Mac doesn’t support writing data onto NTFS volumes). In this case, Paragon NTFS for Mac is recommended to achieve this.

Still, I cannot guarantee you that your drive is 100% recognizable by your TV, it also depends on your TV, usually in common sense, it should support both FAT32 and NTFS.