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Not concerning about permissions, security, seamless usage with different OS. Journaling remains unclear.

Do I need journaling (how exactly will it help)? If yes/no what is the threshold, when I definitely should prefer journaling FS or FS without journaling?

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  • exFAT is only good if you not store a large number of files because of it's cluster size of usually 128KB. So every saved file is wasting ~64KB...
    – Robert
    Commented Mar 10, 2022 at 17:39
  • @Robert obviously you can choose the cluster size at format time. It's just the default size that's large. But as it doesn't support journaling it's not quite suitable for removable drives
    – phuclv
    Commented Mar 11, 2022 at 1:51

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Journaling protects from power-outage at write. After that, there's no difference.
ExFAT can't journal & NTFS doesn't do it properly. HFS+ ZFS & BTRFS do.

If you're planning on making a backup & parking it on a shelf, it's not really an important consideration.

From Wikipedia - Journaling file system

A journaling file system is a file system that keeps track of changes not yet committed to the file system's main part by recording the goal of such changes in a data structure known as a "journal", which is usually a circular log. In the event of a system crash or power failure, such file systems can be brought back online more quickly with a lower likelihood of becoming corrupted.

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  • what do you mean by "NTFS doesn't do it properly"?
    – phuclv
    Commented Mar 11, 2022 at 1:50
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    Probably referring to NTFS using the journal for metadata only and not the file data as well
    – Greg W
    Commented Mar 11, 2022 at 3:22
  • "power-outage" in this case can also mean unplugging a drive, which is relevant with removable media
    – thomasrutter
    Commented Jun 3 at 9:35

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