Arch Linux

JonathanArcher

Member

From: San Francisco

Registered: 2008-11-12

Posts: 108

Filesystem of a backup harddrive

I'll be ordering a big external harddrive soon which will only be there to store backups of my files. Now I have wondered if there is any importance for choosing one filesystem over another on a backup harddrive? Should I choose one of the newer ones like ext4 or stick with ext3? Does it actually matter that my current filesystem, where the files are located that I want to backup, are still on ext3, while the backup harddrive has a different filesystem?

JackH79

Member

From: Australia

Registered: 2009-06-18

Posts: 663

Website

Re: Filesystem of a backup harddrive

You can have a look at this: http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Beg … stem_Types, which might help you decide.

Personally I'd go for ext4. (http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Ext4)

And no, it doesn't matter that your other drive is ext3, or reiserfs, or ntfs, or ...

ngoonee

Forum Fellow

From: Between Thailand and Singapore

Registered: 2009-03-17

Posts: 7,354

Re: Filesystem of a backup harddrive

You may want to consider (depending on what you're backing up) NTFS. That way your backup is useable on any system. Don't do this if you're backing up (for example) ~/.wine or similar locations with symlinks etc.

The other issue with ext4 and the other UNIX filesystems is user permissions. Normally on single-user systems your UID would be 1000 which isn't a problem, but if you ever go to a multi-user machine the non-1000 users would not be able to write etc.

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quigybo

Member

Registered: 2009-01-15

Posts: 223

Re: Filesystem of a backup harddrive

Do you need to access the files on it from a windows box? This will definitely influence your decision. Keep in mind that it is still possible to access ext3 from windows, there are a few tools around to do this (I use ext2ifs http://www.fs-driver.org/). I'm not sure if there is a way to access ext4 from windows yet.

gablink

Member

Registered: 2010-05-21

Posts: 22

Re: Filesystem of a backup harddrive

I'm not sure if there is a way to access ext4 from windows yet.

ReadOnly yes

Wintervenom

Member

Registered: 2008-08-20

Posts: 1,011

Re: Filesystem of a backup harddrive

I'm not sure if there is a way to access ext4 from windows yet.

[Ext2Explorer]

Last edited by Wintervenom (2010-06-03 15:56:37)

falconindy

Developer

From: New York, USA

Registered: 2009-10-22

Posts: 4,111

Website

Re: Filesystem of a backup harddrive

I can't find evidence that any of the Windows tools are capable of reading Ext4 with extents. Plenty of posts about Ext4 filenames being garbled, and a few more about how "read-only" access bricked the partition -- but I'm going to chalk that up to PEBKAC.

For a backup, I see no reason to bother with Ext4 over Ext3 unless you explicitly need the unlimited subdirectories or uhh... more granular timestamps? The major "benefits" of Ext4 are aimed at performance at the cost of reliability (delayed allocation is butt in a power outage) -- which aren't really a concern of a backup.

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JonathanArcher

Member

From: San Francisco

Registered: 2008-11-12

Posts: 108

Re: Filesystem of a backup harddrive

Thanks guys!

I will only use it for my own computer(s) which will mean Linux only, so NTFS is not an option. I guess I will decide between ext3 and 4 then.