As long as you are going to work with Mac OSX, you dont need to worry about this.

You can get an external SSD (Samsung T5 500GB 89.99 from Amazon ) and format for a reasonable price to use with your Macs Time Machine.

The SSDs are fast, dont need any external power supply, and have more resistance to shock and vibrations.

For the time machine, you have to format the SSD from the default shipped format.

Once the backup completed, the status will change to completed, and you can eject the disk safely.

Next time, you dont need to select the drive or start the backup, The entire process is automatic, and the system will start the Time machine and select the same backup disk once you connect the SSD to the Mac.

ExFat is an upgraded version for the FAT32 file system that limits the maximum file size to 4GB.

You dont need to format the disk again if you want to use the disk for normal backup with Windows and Mac.

Tap on the button on the top left the bar and select Show All Devices instead of Show Only Volumes.

You can select the individual devices and get information in this video mode.

The million-dollar question is there are a lot of Disk formats are available and which one you want to select.

How do you find out the right format for Time machine backup Lets see a few more details about each format.

APFS system is fast, offers a quick read and write and efficient.

This file system is ideal for data transfer and saving the data direct from Mac, not through the time machine backup.

The format Apple support for Mac owners for Time machine is Mac OS Extended (Journaled).

The format is good for handling the files between both OS under 4GB size.

The SSD drives are formatted in ExFat by default to support both Windows and Mac OS X.

Windows is actively using the NTFS file system to store and retrieve files on the Windows system.

You can use the encrypted disk or Case-sensitive for the naming convention.

There are three options available to select the scheme and let see some details.

We are going to select this as the scheme for our disk partition.

Just for additional information, the GUID partition can be used as a startup disk for PowerPC based Macs.

This scheme applies to DOS and Windows-based file systems and formats.

Best Format For Mac Drive