FAQs
For Mac only, APFS is the best.
If you plan to use your drive for File History backups on a Windows computer, and you use only Windows, stick to NTFS (New Technology File System). NTFS is native to Windows, and most hard drives are preformatted for this file system. macOS and Linux computers, however, can only read files stored on such a drive; they cannot write to an NTFS-formatted drive.
If you need to transfer files between Mac and Windows computers, exFAT (extended File Allocation Table) is the best option.
https://support.apple.com/guide/disk-utility/file-system-formats-dsku19ed921c/mac
PCIe 3.0 is enough, and considering the future scalability and the stability brought by the updated technology, PCIe 4.0 is also recommended.
If you notice a performance drop when an external hard drive is connected to your computer (for instance, an SSD hard drive connected to the Thunderbolt 3 port), the following settings can be enabled to help increase the performance:
https://www.dell.com/support/kbdoc/zh-cn/000125479/how-to-improve-performance-of-external-hard-drive?lang=en
