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microft

Member

From: Portugal

Registered: 2006-09-16

Posts: 29

The best filesystem for an external Hard-Drive

For some time now I've been using external hard-drives for mass storage.
I was using a 250Gb LaCie HD, and because it was always full I never got around to changing the filesystem.

This week I bought another LaCie HD (this time 500Gb), and I am now conducting some tests to determine the best filesytem to use on it.

So, I thought of making this poll to get the community's opition.

iphitus

Forum Fellow

From: Melbourne, Australia

Registered: 2004-10-09

Posts: 4,927

Re: The best filesystem for an external Hard-Drive

it all depends on your purpose. this question is asked repeatedly with no definite answer.

if you want to read it on windows, you only have the choice of vfat -- the ntfs drivers imho are still too immature to be trusted.

if windows doesnt matter, then go for ext3.
ext2 would be silly to use. reiser4 isn't worth the trouble. don't know a lot about jfs and xfs, and have never used them.
reiserfs isnt well enough maintained to really bother with. All it receives is bug fixes, no further active development and improvement.

ext3 is pretty much what I would use, it's the best tested and most reliable of all the linux filesystems. and when setup correctly the performance is adequate. It's also still very actively maintained with improvements still being merged and a solid general purpose filesystem.

Hope that helps. I guess that means my vote is for ext3. Different filesystems have different strengths, so it depends really though, on what you're using the drive for and what you're putting on it.

James

PJ

Member

From: Sweden

Registered: 2005-10-11

Posts: 602

Re: The best filesystem for an external Hard-Drive

if windows doesnt matter, then go for ext3.
ext2 would be silly to use.

Since I am mostly using Linux on my system I have chosen ext3 for a shared partition and it is possible to access it in windows (nt/2000/xp) with something like this: http://www.fs-driver.org/
I have never had any problems with this driver.