External hard drive, what FS to use...

ezzetabi · 2014-12-03 20:38:09

External hard drive of 2TB, what filesystem to use and to protect the disk?

The main concern is portability, I might need to use the disk in other OS or distro.
The second concern is safety, if I lose the disk I would have important data lost with it.

So, I was thinking to use udf as filesystem as it seems well supported everywhere nowadays:

mkudffs --blocksize=512 --media-type=hd --utf8 --lvid="soandso" --vid="soandso" --fsid="soandso" /dev/sdZ

And keep a directory inside protected via veracrypt since it also seems to support Linux, OSX, and Windows.

What do you think? Any flaw in this plan? What do you suggest?

Last edited by ezzetabi (2014-12-04 13:10:14)

drcouzelis · 2014-12-03 21:00:05

Interesting... I was in a similar situation recently. I've never heard of UDF before. In my situation I went with FAT32 for ease of use and compatability.

Does UDF support journaling? If not, what would make UDF a better choice over FAT32?

I found a few websites that discussed using UDF on an external drive. It seems possible but a little weird or tricky to setup properly.

ezzetabi · 2014-12-03 21:18:44

No journaling, but still quite a few advantages. One for all the max file size, with hidef movies 4gb is seldom limiting.

karol · 2014-12-03 21:30:53

Check which Linux file systems are readable (and writable, if that's also needed) on Windows and Mac.

grubenm · 2014-12-04 04:58:38

At least with the ext2-4 filesystems, Windows and Mac can handle reading and writing with additional software

trapanator · 2014-12-04 08:05:18

for me, NTFS is the best choice.

ugjka · 2014-12-04 09:41:16

Someone recommended me to use udf on usb drive, I thought he was trolling me. Now I need to try.

Last edited by ugjka (2014-12-04 10:46:10)

ezzetabi · 2014-12-04 10:04:48

My bad, DELETED

Last edited by ezzetabi (2014-12-04 13:10:04)

Arch Linux

#1 2014-12-03 20:38:09

External hard drive, what FS to use...

#2 2014-12-03 21:00:05

Re: External hard drive, what FS to use...

#3 2014-12-03 21:18:44

Re: External hard drive, what FS to use...

#4 2014-12-03 21:30:53

Re: External hard drive, what FS to use...

#5 2014-12-04 04:58:38

Re: External hard drive, what FS to use...

#6 2014-12-04 08:05:18

Re: External hard drive, what FS to use...

#7 2014-12-04 09:41:16

Re: External hard drive, what FS to use...

#8 2014-12-04 10:04:48

Re: External hard drive, what FS to use...

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