Which filesystem to use for an external hard drive?

lardon · 2009-06-30 11:14:57

Hi all,

In the past few days I have experimented a bit with linux filesystems (ext3/ext4/xfs) on my external hard drive. It turns out that dealing with unix permissions on these devices is a pain: if you have different UIDs on different computers, or if you simply want to share a file with someone else, you're screwed unless you're root!

Of cource an easy solution is to go with vfat or ntfs, but using these legacy filesystems is really unsatisfactory. I'm pretty sure the linux world has a better solution. Will you help me find it?

DevoidOfWindows · 2009-06-30 11:18:31

Well, you can always use ext3, and change the permissions of the file system root to 777...

lardon · 2009-06-30 11:21:47

DevoidOfWindows wrote:

Well, you can always use ext3, and change the permissions of the file system root to 777...

I would have to fix the permissions every time I unmount the disk. Not very practical...

SpeedVin · 2009-06-30 11:24:26

Just add to your rc.local in /etc line:
chmod 777 / and always when you log system add chmod 777 to your rooot partition

lardon · 2009-06-30 11:31:51

SpeedVin wrote:

Just add to your rc.local in /etc line:
chmod 777 / and always when you log system add chmod 777 to your rooot partition

If I understand correctly, you need to be root on all of the machines you use the external hard drive for that to work. Not practical.

SpeedVin · 2009-06-30 11:33:06

No you have to boot your system
You can login as user

SiC · 2009-06-30 11:44:02

I use NTFS personally, it has the advantage that it is portable to less flexible operating systems Oh, and the permissions thing is not an issue using this filesystem.

lardon · 2009-06-30 11:53:39

SpeedVin wrote:

No you have to boot your system
You can login as user

You need to be root to edit /etc/rc.local.

SiC wrote:

I use NTFS personally, it has the advantage that it is portable to less flexible operating systems wink Oh, and the permissions thing is not an issue using this filesystem.

I don't care about the less flexible OSes personnaly, I find it a bit sad to be forced to use ntfs just because of a permission problem :-(

Obi-Lan · 2009-06-30 12:33:46

[offtopic]
The whole UID thing sucks in linux imo. Same thing with NFS, UIDs need to be syncronized with server and client to get things going without root priviledges. On the otherhand you need just the UID to get access to the files. In Windows networks you need atleast to know the password.
[/offtopic]

Anyways there are some problems with ntfs atleast in windows: it doesn't write data immediately to harddisk so removing harddisk on the fly could cause data loss so you need to use "safe removal" function and sometimes wait quite long to harddisk actually unmount.

arkham · 2009-06-30 13:21:27

I use ext3 on my external hard disk; using hal and thunar-volman does not require root priviledges, if the files are owned by the same group and the permission is set to 775.

Last edited by arkham (2009-06-30 13:26:12)

Themaister · 2009-06-30 13:27:02

Obi-Lan wrote:

[offtopic]
The whole UID thing sucks in linux imo. Same thing with NFS, UIDs need to be syncronized with server and client to get things going without root priviledges. On the otherhand you need just the UID to get access to the files. In Windows networks you need atleast to know the password.
[/offtopic]
Anyways there are some problems with ntfs atleast in windows: it doesn't write data immediately to harddisk so removing harddisk on the fly could cause data loss so you need to use "safe removal" function and sometimes wait quite long to harddisk actually unmount.

Really? I never had that issue with NTFS. I use NTFS on my external HDD and the Win7 partition, and it always write immediately. I've had that problem with FAT32-partitions though.

The reason I would choose NTFS for an external HDD is that it works on other PCs (pretty much Windows every one of them ...), which is the whole point of having an external HDD

Last edited by Themaister (2009-06-30 13:30:02)

Obi-Lan · 2009-06-30 17:00:30

I tried 8Gb usb stick with ntfs and I got many times files missing, usually the ones which we copied to the stick just before removal.

lardon · 2009-06-30 18:24:37

Thank you all for your answers, I guess I'll use ntfs for now. But here is a tip for filesystem developers: please provide a way to turn off unix permissions completely, it would be very useful for removable media.

Llama · 2009-07-01 06:20:22

Themaister wrote:

The reason I would choose NTFS for an external HDD is that it works on other PCs (pretty much Windows every one of them ...), which is the whole point of having an external HDD

You just beat me to it .

ngoonee · 2009-07-01 07:28:03

lardon wrote:

Thank you all for your answers, I guess I'll use ntfs for now. But here is a tip for filesystem developers: please provide a way to turn off unix permissions completely, it would be very useful for removable media.

Always remember to unmount or safely remove. The responses above indicate that not everyone appreciates this. For efficiency purposes, NTFS, ext3/4, and other modern file systems 'cache' their writes to your media, the cache gets flushed on unmount or safe removal. If you just pull the thumb drive out, the past 'x' seconds, 'x' being the amount of time since the last flush, WILL get lost.

DarkMind · 2009-07-15 07:17:24

DevoidOfWindows wrote:

Well, you can always use ext3, and change the permissions of the file system root to 777...

ext3????????????? (it 2009 year..)

ext4 is the way

smartboyathome · 2009-07-15 14:25:33

I use ReiserFS on my external hard drive, though I started using it because I was experimenting with filesystems over a year ago (a year and a half now is it?). I just never changed it. One thing to be wary of, when you get over 200GBs of data on a ReiserFS partition, it slows down a lot.

B-Con · 2009-07-16 08:09:23

There's a committee out at the moment to create FAT's successor. A universal non-OS-oriented file system that can serve as a default for flash devices (I think it's supposed to be flash-friendly as well). An article about it came through on reddit a while ago. I think it's a serious endeavor, IIRC several big names were backing it.

That's just FYI. Currently the situation sucks, but it shouldn't for forever.

lardon · 2009-07-16 09:46:31

B-Con wrote:

There's a committee out at the moment to create FAT's successor. A universal non-OS-oriented file system that can serve as a default for flash devices (I think it's supposed to be flash-friendly as well). An article about it came through on reddit a while ago. I think it's a serious endeavor, IIRC several big names were backing it.
That's just FYI. Currently the situation sucks, but it shouldn't for forever.

Do you by any chance remember the name of it?

moljac024 · 2009-07-16 09:57:17

DarkMind wrote:

DevoidOfWindows wrote:
Well, you can always use ext3, and change the permissions of the file system root to 777...
ext3????????????? (it 2009 year..)

ext4 is the way

ext3 won't be going anywhere for a long time...

Acecero · 2009-07-16 18:45:59

B-Con wrote:

There's a committee out at the moment to create FAT's successor. A universal non-OS-oriented file system that can serve as a default for flash devices (I think it's supposed to be flash-friendly as well). An article about it came through on reddit a while ago. I think it's a serious endeavor, IIRC several big names were backing it.
That's just FYI. Currently the situation sucks, but it shouldn't for forever.

Hopefully every OS would support that if the situation gets better. Would it also serve as a default for external HDDs later in the future?

B-Con · 2009-07-17 09:26:31

lardon wrote:

B-Con wrote:
There's a committee out at the moment to create FAT's successor. A universal non-OS-oriented file system that can serve as a default for flash devices (I think it's supposed to be flash-friendly as well). An article about it came through on reddit a while ago. I think it's a serious endeavor, IIRC several big names were backing it.
That's just FYI. Currently the situation sucks, but it shouldn't for forever.
Do you by any chance remember the name of it?

No, I don't, unfortunately. The article came through months ago and reddit's search feature is crap. I know Sandisk developed ExtremeFFS, but I'm (fairly) sure that's not what I'm thinking about.

You can tell where the priorities lie down at the big companies like Microsoft and Intel. Goodness knows FAT's old enough. We have many better alternatives to FAT out there right *now* and could develop more but nothing has yet been accepted as a new standard, or even implemented by default in Windows. Why? Beats me. You'd think Intel would be all over that, but I suppose not. It's not like the features offered by newer file-systems wouldn't be a benefit to average users (log recovery, optimized read/write, etc).

MS spends billions re-redesigning entire operating systems, and we still format our flash drives with FAT. That's priorities for you. There exist open source alternatives, but we can't use those without assuming that we'll never need to plug it into a Windows machine.

Last edited by B-Con (2009-07-17 09:26:41)

brebs · 2009-07-17 12:13:22

Obi-Lan wrote:

I tried 8Gb usb stick with ntfs and I got many times files missing, usually the ones which we copied to the stick just before removal.

Use the flush option.

Arch Linux

#1 2009-06-30 11:14:57

Which filesystem to use for an external hard drive?

#2 2009-06-30 11:18:31

Re: Which filesystem to use for an external hard drive?

#3 2009-06-30 11:21:47

Re: Which filesystem to use for an external hard drive?

#4 2009-06-30 11:24:26

Re: Which filesystem to use for an external hard drive?

#5 2009-06-30 11:31:51

Re: Which filesystem to use for an external hard drive?

#6 2009-06-30 11:33:06

Re: Which filesystem to use for an external hard drive?

#7 2009-06-30 11:44:02

Re: Which filesystem to use for an external hard drive?

#8 2009-06-30 11:53:39

Re: Which filesystem to use for an external hard drive?

#9 2009-06-30 12:33:46

Re: Which filesystem to use for an external hard drive?

#10 2009-06-30 13:21:27

Re: Which filesystem to use for an external hard drive?

#11 2009-06-30 13:27:02

Re: Which filesystem to use for an external hard drive?

#12 2009-06-30 17:00:30

Re: Which filesystem to use for an external hard drive?

#13 2009-06-30 18:24:37

Re: Which filesystem to use for an external hard drive?

#14 2009-07-01 06:20:22

Re: Which filesystem to use for an external hard drive?

#15 2009-07-01 07:28:03

Re: Which filesystem to use for an external hard drive?

#16 2009-07-15 07:17:24

Re: Which filesystem to use for an external hard drive?

#17 2009-07-15 14:25:33

Re: Which filesystem to use for an external hard drive?

#18 2009-07-16 08:09:23

Re: Which filesystem to use for an external hard drive?

#19 2009-07-16 09:46:31

Re: Which filesystem to use for an external hard drive?

#20 2009-07-16 09:57:17

Re: Which filesystem to use for an external hard drive?

#21 2009-07-16 18:45:59

Re: Which filesystem to use for an external hard drive?

#22 2009-07-17 09:26:31

Re: Which filesystem to use for an external hard drive?

#23 2009-07-17 12:13:22

Re: Which filesystem to use for an external hard drive?

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