Newbie question: want to add external SSD. Which format should I use

Hi All. I am a newbie here. Recently got a Macbook pro retina 2015 with Parallels 10 and Windoze 8.1. Made a mistake and bought the 125Gb Macbook instead of the 256Gb version. I use Dropbox for most stuff (accessible from Windows). Problem is the internal SSD is out of space already.

I am thinking of buying a Lacie rugged 2TB external drive. Most of the usage of this Macbook will be Windows-based, as it is for work, so I need to know which format is best for the drive as it will be primarily Dropbox on there. Or, the other option is to just put Parallels and Windows on there, with Dropbox (no idea how to yet, but that's another question). I want to upgrade to Windows 10 but no chance when less than 10Gb space left.

Any suggestions anyone?

 

Hi Tom,
I see that you are running out of space in your Mac. The best option here will be getting an external hard drive. A 2TB external hard drive should serve the purpose well. You also enquired about the drive format of that external drive. If you're going to use the hard drive exclusively with Mac OS X, we recommend Mac OS Extended (Journaled). If you'll be accessing the drive from Windows as well, select FAT32.

 

Hi Dishant
I am really keen on getting good performance from the drive and I just found out that a 2TB SSD is price prohibitive. My ideal is an external SSD via Thunderbolt connection as I have to work with big files (databases etc) and Dropbox. The drive will primarily be accessed from Windows. It was suggested to me that I format it as NTFS but I know IOS has trouble mounting those automatically (?). Would using FAT32 cause performance to drop? Would you recommend putting the whole of Parallels and the Virtual Windows onto the external drive, thereby leaving the internal SSD for IOS?

 

Hi again Tom,
Let me explain you the preference order. If you are planning to get an external drive then it I would suggest you to copy all the data from your Mac to the external drive and see if you can free enough space to use your Windows 8.1 (64GB is the basic hard disk space for Windows VMs). I am suggesting this because the best performance can be received only from the internal Mac HD for obvious reasons. But if in case this is not possible then you can run it from your external Hard disc also. The best speed from an external drive can be attained if it is Flash Drive on Thunderbolt.
Please refer to this knowledge based article for more information on this: http://kb.parallels.com/122874

In case you want to run virtual machine stored on NTFS-formatted partition, you need to install NTFS driver for your Mac. The file format will not effect the performance. We just have to make sure that it is compatible with the System we are going to work on. Let me knows if you have any more queries.