>>510267033 (OP)
WD (Western Digital) My Book drive comes from the factory partitioned exFAT format, making it compatible with PC MAC and other platforms
If you are only using the drive on a PC and don't ever intend to plug it into a Mac or xbox
do yourself a favor
reformatting erases data, so do this on new drives or backup the data from the drive before reformatting.
Partition the drive and choose NTFS format
exFAT and NTFS are both file systems used by Windows, but they have different strengths and weaknesses. exFAT is designed for portability and compatibility across different operating systems, while NTFS is a more feature-rich file system optimized for Windows. If you need a file system for external drives that will be used on multiple devices, exFAT is a good choice. If you're primarily using the drive with Windows, NTFS is a better option.
If OP's drives are exFAT
Its likely that everything he has stored on 4 of those drives would fit on one of those drives formatted NTFS.
data can take up more space on an exFAT formatted drive compared to other file systems like NTFS or APFS, especially with many small files. This is primarily due to the way exFAT allocates storage space using larger cluster sizes.
exFAT uses larger cluster sizes (the minimum amount of disk space a file occupies) than other file systems like NTFS. For example, on large disks, exFAT defaults to 128KB clusters, while NTFS might use 4KB clusters.
If a file's size isn't an exact multiple of the cluster size, the remaining space within the last cluster is wasted, a phenomenon called internal fragmentation. This is more noticeable with many small files, as each file will occupy at least one full cluster, regardless of its actual size.
Example:
If you have a 1KB file on an exFAT drive with a 128KB cluster size, it will still take up 128KB of space on the disk. If you have many such small files, this wasted space can add up significantly.
