If you want a setup that's reliable long-term instead of "works fine until something breaks," I'd split the 2TB SSD into two partitions.
Partition A — NTFS (~1.2TB–1.5TB)
Use this for:
Steam library
Windows backups
Large game installs
NTFS is simply more reliable for Windows-heavy use. It handles permissions better, plays nicer with Steam, and is less prone to corruption issues if the drive gets disconnected during writes.
Partition B — exFAT (~500GB–800GB)
Use this for:
Mac ↔ Windows file transfers
Media/projects/documents
exFAT is the easiest cross-platform option since both Windows and macOS support it natively.
A few extra things worth doing:
Initialize the drive as GPT, not MBR.
Leave NTFS at the default 4KB allocation size.
For the exFAT partition, a larger allocation size (like 128KB) can help a bit if you mainly store large files.
Also, Windows Disk Management is fine for basic setup, but if you ever want to resize partitions later without wiping the drive, tools like AOMEI Partition Assistant or GParted are much more flexible.
One small macOS gotcha:
It'll create hidden files like .DS_Store on the exFAT partition. Totally normal. Just make sure to properly eject the SSD before unplugging it, especially when using exFAT.
That layout should give you a pretty good balance between Windows performance/reliability and Mac compatibility without overcomplicating things.
