Arch Linux

Reasons

Member

From: Washington

Registered: 2007-11-04

Posts: 572

External HDD FS

I have a 1TB external HDD that I want to be able to read and write in windows and linux. I can't use FAT32 because of the 4GB limit. I will also be sharing this drive through my uni's network if that matters.

kamituel

Member

From: Poland

Registered: 2006-09-14

Posts: 47

Website

Re: External HDD FS

I would go with NTFS, it's readable and writable both on Linux and Windows machines, without any additional software required

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I tried, I failed, no matter. Try again, fail again, fail better.

zyghom

Member

From: Poland/currently Africa

Registered: 2006-05-11

Posts: 432

Website

Re: External HDD FS

you can use ext3 with no problem under windows

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Zygfryd Homonto

Army

Member

Registered: 2007-12-07

Posts: 1,784

Re: External HDD FS

The questions are
· Which drivers are better, the ext3 driver for Windows or the ntfs-3g for Linux?
· Which filesystem is better? (I guess we all know, that ext3 is better)
· Which os do you use more often?
· Do you use your HD to share stuff with other people?

I formatted my ext HD with ext3, maybe I'll switch it to xfs one day, but that's not the question here. If someone wants my data, I run into problems, except if this person has an ext. HD as well, cause then I plug it into my machine and everything is allrighty.

If you want compatibility, choose ntfs, cause it runs on every os (I think on Mac as well)
If you want a better fs with perfect performance in linux and acceptable performance in Windows, choose ext3

zyghom

Member

From: Poland/currently Africa

Registered: 2006-05-11

Posts: 432

Website

Re: External HDD FS

there is also one more aspect: security of your data on usb hdd
for this purpose I use there ext3 with cryptsetup/luks
so it is possible to keep there save data + on other partition you can use this hdd for data exchange

on win XP I always used ntfs - few days ago it went corrupted - thanks Arch I had partimage saved and restore took just 20min
so, even ntfs can fail

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Zygfryd Homonto

Zeist

Arch Linux f@h Team Member

Registered: 2008-07-04

Posts: 532

Re: External HDD FS

Last time I tried OS X couldn't write NTFS but it could read it. Not sure about how it is now though as I haven't tried NTFS drives on OS X in years, OS X supports fuse though which makes it feel as if it should be possible to do. Then again, there is a third party ext driver for OS X as well.

All in all NTFS has higher compatibility. Oh, and for sharing neither matters if you run samba as I assume its something like that you mean with sharing the drive though your uni's network.

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kamituel

Member

From: Poland

Registered: 2006-09-14

Posts: 47

Website

Re: External HDD FS

there is also one more aspect: security of your data on usb hdd
for this purpose I use there ext3 with cryptsetup/luks
so it is possible to keep there save data + on other partition you can use this hdd for data exchange

Actually, for this purpose I would recommend using TrueCrypt + NTFS - it would be possible to use encrypted volumes on both Linux and Windows machines.
I've done this with my own 1TB drive, and I must say it works like a charm (with TrueCrypt 6.0 from ABS). I've used 128 bit AES and when, on ex. watching movie directly from encrypted partition, CPU usage is no bigger than few percent.

The only drawback of this solution is that you will have to encrypt it first, and it takes like 15-20 hours to encrypt the whole drive (931GB). But hey - it has to be done only once

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I tried, I failed, no matter. Try again, fail again, fail better.

Reasons

Member

From: Washington

Registered: 2007-11-04

Posts: 572

Re: External HDD FS

Right now it is xfs, then I found out windows can't see it without a huge workaround. Really it is just media so it's not so bad. I just wish there was a linux driver for exfat (fat64).

Phrodo_00

Member

From: Seattle, WA

Registered: 2006-04-09

Posts: 342

Website

Re: External HDD FS

Last time I tried OS X couldn't write NTFS but it could read it. Not sure about how it is now though as I haven't tried NTFS drives on OS X in years, OS X supports fuse though which makes it feel as if it should be possible to do. Then again, there is a third party ext driver for OS X as well.

dunno about fuse, but it doesn't work out of the box in leopard (I ended up setting vsftpd to get the friggin files)