Most portable file system for large drives?

ezzetabi · 2009-01-03 15:58:04

I bought a large portable hard disk (1 TB).

I bought it portable so I can use in many systems, what do you think is the best file system to format it?
Example of use:
- A customer calls me that its computer become crazy: I go there, I use my hard drive with many Windows cleaning programs and seek the problem. The customer might even pay me.
- Late Saturday night with friends, what about seeing a movie? I have a copy of many of my dvds in my hard drive...

Thoughts:
FAT16, the most understood (even the old NTs can read it) can not be used for size.
ext2 (or 3), Windows understands it installing the driver. But it means I need a second partition or drive with the drivers itself, and I seldom work with windows machines without root (ops, Administrator) account.
NTFS, maybe the best? The recent Windows understand it natively, the older need a driver but W98 are rare. Linux instead can use it without problems.

What do you think?

Archiee · 2009-01-03 16:04:20

I have the same problem as you.
I chose NTFS because it works fine at customers due to the fact that all of them have Windows.

Good luck

dmartins · 2009-01-03 16:13:14

I think NTFS is probably the most easily portable. Most linux distros seem to ship with ntfs-3g for r/w support and ntfs-3g works on OSX as well, letting you r/w on Macs too. Sure there are ext2 drivers for windows, but afaik there are none for OSX yet.

djnm · 2009-01-03 16:56:02

I would use NTFS. I just formatted a 1TB drive to NTFS and it's working well on OSX(with ntfs-3g)/Archlinux/Windows with read/write support.

kjon · 2009-01-03 18:54:46

XFS with logbufs=8,noatime and nodiratime! (and create it with -d logsize=128m)

If you need to access to your hdd you can always use a tiny virtual machine created on vmware on vbox. Of course leave a tiny partition of 1 gb. (fat32 formatted) to carry a few installers.

I got a few 320 gb. hdd formatted with this layout. Virtualbox has never let me down when transferring files from a virtual machine to a host and viceversa.

evilgold · 2009-01-04 03:28:25

I think the format you use really comes down to how often you use witch operating system. I've noticed that NTFS has trouble mounting under linux if its not properly unmounted from windows or has errors. And Ext3 wont mount under windows unless properly unmounted in linux. Personally though i would much rahter trust my data to ext3 then NTFS, but thats just my preference. I myself stick with XFS for most of my drives, and share files via samba to windows machines.

Another suggestion although this is probably not an option since you already baught your drive: You could get a portable network storage device, such as the linksys NSLU2, and keep it in whatever format you like.

fukawi2 · 2009-01-04 04:49:23

Best portability is NTFS, unfortunately.

weasel8 · 2009-01-04 05:30:30

Yeah, I recommend using NTFS-3G as well.

ezzetabi · 2009-01-05 18:44:54

ops... Sorry for the dumbness, but how can I format in ntfs?
My system does not have mkfs.nfts and pacman -Ss ntfs does not suggest me anything...

kjon · 2009-01-05 18:54:35

pacman -S ntfsprogs

fukawi2 · 2009-01-05 21:26:04

Also pacman -S ntfs-3g for once you get it formatted

iBertus · 2009-01-05 21:40:51

+1 for NTFS via ntfs-3g. It's worked well for me on 3 external HDDs with pretty heavy usage, and no data loss yet. I don't use OSX but performance is good on Arch and Windows XP/Vista and better than you would expect from a FUSE driver.

Super Jamie · 2009-01-05 21:43:43

evilgold wrote:

I think the format you use really comes down to how often you use witch operating system. I've noticed that NTFS has trouble mounting under linux if its not properly unmounted from windows or has errors. And Ext3 wont mount under windows unless properly unmounted in linux.

And this is why no file system is really that portable, except for the operating system it's meant for.

If you want to keep a portable drive around to use on both Windows and Linux, you need to keep a Windows and Linux install around, to fix any errors.

The good news is, you can use Windows on VirtualBox with USB Proxy to fix any mounting errors in NTFS.

Or, you have a terabyte, some of which will be used for work. Why not make a 100gb NTFS work partition, and the rest ext3 with your personal data?

Arch Linux

#1 2009-01-03 15:58:04

Most portable file system for large drives?

#2 2009-01-03 16:04:20

Re: Most portable file system for large drives?

#3 2009-01-03 16:13:14

Re: Most portable file system for large drives?

#4 2009-01-03 16:56:02

Re: Most portable file system for large drives?

#5 2009-01-03 18:54:46

Re: Most portable file system for large drives?

#6 2009-01-04 03:28:25

Re: Most portable file system for large drives?

#7 2009-01-04 04:49:23

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#8 2009-01-04 05:30:30

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#9 2009-01-05 18:44:54

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#10 2009-01-05 18:54:35

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#11 2009-01-05 21:26:04

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#12 2009-01-05 21:40:51

Re: Most portable file system for large drives?

#13 2009-01-05 21:43:43

Re: Most portable file system for large drives?

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