I say 'thumb drive' only to differentiate it from a different kind of flash media.

I'm finally going to offload all my daughter hundreds of photos from her Time Machine drive, just so she can keep the photos somewhere else. I bought a 128GB flash drive (USB 2.0, but it's just for storage), but before I just start dumping pics on there, I'm wondering if I ought to reformat it, and if so, what format? It's probably exFAT out of the package, but will it be better to format to something else? She's more than likely to always use it on a Mac, but there's always the possibility she'll bring it to a friend's place who has a Windows PC. She use an iPad exclusively now, so she can't use it on that anyway.

She has a lot in the cloud now, but these are old pics from years ago that aren't worth taking up cloud storage, but have a little too much sentimental value to just trash.

Thanks.

FWIW, I use a thumb drive with my iPad. It works fine.

[support.apple.com].

Ahh...interesting. I had no idea that was evn possible. Thanks.

Still wondering what to format the drive to, though.

ExFat if pc use is a possibility. And always format them out of the package- never know what’s on them otherwise.

HFS+ if PCs aren't a consideration.

And if they're too sentimental to trash, I assume they'll be backed up as well?

She should keep them somewhere 'elses'.

---

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Wurm,

This is my method:

If you plan to use it with both a Mac and/or a Windows machine, stick with whatever format it is in out of the box. Just reformat it in the same format.

For use on just an older mac that can't read an APFS drive, go with HFS+/GUID partition.

For a just a newer Mac that can read APFS drives, go with APFS/GUID partition.

Note, some of the newer flash drives are literally stick versions of SSDs. That's why I have no hesitation using APFS when feasible.

Following the above has worked for me without any issues.

Robert