Discussion: What file system do you use for external backups and why?

scarletxfi · 2010-11-19 07:01:45

I just got a brand new seagate 2TB hdd to act as an external backup.
I use ext2 with it, because it's USB (sata->usb enclosure), and I'm not likely to connect it direct to a PC anytime soon (also my computer is old and I liek to keep ram usage down as much as possible)...

What filesystems do you use\prefer for external backups.. and why?
Also, what type of connection do you use (USB,eSATA,etc,) and size (ie larger then a disk on key..)?

orschiro · 2010-11-19 07:38:08

I use an encrypted ext4 partition on my 250GB USB drive because it's plain simple to use and has the same file system than my system partitions.

Regards

Allan · 2010-11-19 07:51:12

ext3 on 750GB external drives... I was too lazy to think about using anything else.

mikesd · 2010-11-19 08:05:01

I use a couple of external 1TB drives in rotation with btrfs on dm-crypt .

It's worked well for me for a year or so though I only use it for my personal data. It probably wouldn't be a good idea to use btrfs for business critical data just yet.

Primoz · 2010-11-19 12:37:31

I use NTFS on my 320GB disk. Why because I'm not the only one using it and because I don't want to have problems when someone else needs it.

Cyrusm · 2010-11-19 13:34:01

I do my backups to an external drive with an ext3 filesystem mostly because it's journalled and I'll know that any linux box will be able to read from it if my computer lights on fire or whatever. I also do a backup-backup of my most important documents to an NTFS drive just in case I don't have access to a linux box, but need to get a really important document.

Maxa · 2010-11-19 13:44:07

NTFS on a 500 GB eSATA drive. I use NTFS on most audio/video/text so that I can access it also from Windows if need to.

Anikom15 · 2010-11-19 14:47:36

Well I don't do external backups, but I use FAT for all peripheral storage.

brisbin33 · 2010-11-19 15:06:20

Allan wrote:

I was too lazy to think about using anything else.

I use ext3 for the exact same reason.

I have a 1.5TB for my main computer's backup (I do daily and monthly automatic rsyncs) and a 2TB I got on sale which I occasionally tar all my media into, just to have something in case of a HDD failure. Last time I did that, the process took ~60 hours.

lymphatik · 2010-11-19 15:42:13

brisbin33 wrote:

Allan wrote:
I was too lazy to think about using anything else.
I use ext3 for the exact same reason.
I have a 1.5TB for my main computer's backup (I do daily and monthly automatic rsyncs) and a 2TB I got on sale which I occasionally tar all my media into, just to have something in case of a HDD failure. Last time I did that, the process took ~60 hours.

Did you gain any space by taring your media ?

My external hdd is fat32, it works on every os

Last edited by lymphatik (2010-11-19 15:43:21)

brisbin33 · 2010-11-19 16:03:02

lymphatik wrote:

Did you gain any space by taring your media ?

//blue/0/~/ raw_size() { du -s $1 | awk '{print $1}'; }
//blue/0/~/ size_rips=$(raw_size Rips/)
//blue/0/~/ size_movs=$(raw_size Movies/)
//blue/0/~/ size_tvs=$(raw_size TV_shows/)
//blue/0/~/ size_arc=$(raw_size /mnt/backup2/media.tbz2)
//blue/0/~/ echo "($size_rips + $size_movs + $size_tvs) - $size_arc" | bc
93294064 # what's that, ~88MB?

apparently not that much

scarletxfi · 2010-11-19 22:32:20

So you guys think I should use ext3 instead of ext2 for the external backup?

switch86 · 2010-11-19 22:41:30

scarletxfi wrote:

So you guys think I should use ext3 instead of ext2 for the external backup?

At this point in time you should be asking yourself if you should use ext4 over ext3. There's rarely a reason to use ext2 these days.

As for my own backups, I run encrypted ext3 on my main backup drive. Thinking about switching to ext4.

Last edited by switch86 (2010-11-19 22:43:00)

jasonwryan · 2010-11-19 22:49:31

I like the (placebo?) idea of having my backups journalled - I use ext3...

Anikom15 · 2010-11-20 01:39:56

It would make sense to put backups in a tarball to preserve permissions, structure, and names regardless of filesystem type.

thayer · 2010-11-20 01:42:29

Primoz wrote:

I use NTFS on my 320GB disk. Why because I'm not the only one using it and because I don't want to have problems when someone else needs it.

Ditto.

pseudonomous · 2010-11-23 07:47:39

scarletxfi wrote:

So you guys think I should use ext3 instead of ext2 for the external backup?

Unsafe un-mounts of external media are even more common than unsafe un-mounts of internal media. So you probably want to use an external media. If portability to non-Linux platforms is of no concern, ext3,ext4,xfs,jfs,reiserfs are all decent choices. If portability to other operating systems is a concern, then fat32 is, unfortunately, still the best choice, unless you have single files bigger than 4gb, which would probably mean you want to use ntfs or ext2.

Runiq · 2010-11-23 09:38:41

I used to use ext4 on a 1.5TB HD, but recently switched back to ext3—and a tiny NTFS partition for the ext2fsd install file. I realized I use this drive a lot more outside of my Linux environment than I thought, and it was a hassle (and also unsafe) to disable driver signatures at Windows boot just to get a dev version of ext2fsd to work.

pseudonomous wrote:

If portability to other operating systems is a concern, then fat32 is, unfortunately, still the best choice, unless you have single files bigger than 4gb, which would probably mean you want to use ntfs or ext2.

While helping a friend with her external hard drive, I noticed another limitation of fat32: only 65535 file descriptors per directory. She tried to backup her entire NTFS Windows C: drive to a fat32 one. Took us a good while until we figured that out, and I couldn't find much about it on the net.

anonymous_user · 2010-11-23 14:58:10

My external drive is split into one NTFS partition and a ext4 partition. The NTFS is for Windows-only stuff and the ext4 one for everything else.

Simplet · 2010-12-02 15:31:22

ext3 because I'm a "linux-only" user and don't need ntfs or fat32 partition on my backup hard drive. It works like a charm with rsync.

ChojinDSL · 2010-12-13 16:06:11

Has anyone here had any experience with Ex-Fat, which supposedly fixes the 4GB file problem, or perhaps even UDF?
Wasn't there a discussion among camera storage manufacturers to switch to udf because of the patent encumbered FAT filesystem?

Arch Linux

#1 2010-11-19 07:01:45

Discussion: What file system do you use for external backups and why?

#2 2010-11-19 07:38:08

Re: Discussion: What file system do you use for external backups and why?

#3 2010-11-19 07:51:12

Re: Discussion: What file system do you use for external backups and why?

#4 2010-11-19 08:05:01

Re: Discussion: What file system do you use for external backups and why?

#5 2010-11-19 12:37:31

Re: Discussion: What file system do you use for external backups and why?

#6 2010-11-19 13:34:01

Re: Discussion: What file system do you use for external backups and why?

#7 2010-11-19 13:44:07

Re: Discussion: What file system do you use for external backups and why?

#8 2010-11-19 14:47:36

Re: Discussion: What file system do you use for external backups and why?

#9 2010-11-19 15:06:20

Re: Discussion: What file system do you use for external backups and why?

#10 2010-11-19 15:42:13

Re: Discussion: What file system do you use for external backups and why?

#11 2010-11-19 16:03:02

Re: Discussion: What file system do you use for external backups and why?

#12 2010-11-19 22:32:20

Re: Discussion: What file system do you use for external backups and why?

#13 2010-11-19 22:41:30

Re: Discussion: What file system do you use for external backups and why?

#14 2010-11-19 22:49:31

Re: Discussion: What file system do you use for external backups and why?

#15 2010-11-20 01:39:56

Re: Discussion: What file system do you use for external backups and why?

#16 2010-11-20 01:42:29

Re: Discussion: What file system do you use for external backups and why?

#17 2010-11-23 07:47:39

Re: Discussion: What file system do you use for external backups and why?

#18 2010-11-23 09:38:41

Re: Discussion: What file system do you use for external backups and why?

#19 2010-11-23 14:58:10

Re: Discussion: What file system do you use for external backups and why?

#20 2010-12-02 15:31:22

Re: Discussion: What file system do you use for external backups and why?

#21 2010-12-13 16:06:11

Re: Discussion: What file system do you use for external backups and why?

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