Choosing a proper filesystem for a portable device

[pavallokazzo]

Hi all,
I have this USB (ide to usb) box which contain a 250GB HD (ide) that I want to use as a portable storage device
What do you guys suggest me for filesystem?
Here some of my thougts regard this:

Ext3
- does not have "natural" winz compatibility
- is it good for recovering data????
- you got to properly dismount it to use under windows (www.fs-driver.org drivers)
- disk usage by filesystem (250GB HD is 213 GB file system )

reiserfs -> NO!
- oh my god, no! it nearly destructed a my HD... in true, it just produced around 1gb (!!!) of badblocks dued by errotic magnetic writes... restore of the badblocks with hd' utility didn't worked, I had to blank it and now seems working good
- it doesn't have a real win compatibility at all


fat32
- works ok and is winz compatible
- defragmentation.........
- and file size limitation........

ntfs
- works and is winz compatible
- defragmentation
- you got to properly dismount it in order to use under linux
- compression on the filesystem (does work on ntfs-3g???)

Of course I want windows compatibility, but for ex. I could also use ext3 and put a little fat partition at the front containing fs-driver.org ext2 driver for windows... but ext eats more than 30 GB for its fs on my 250 gb hd... and I can't find any updated info about recovering data with ext3... everybody seems to suggest photorec... at least for the ntfs I can find thousands of programs of that kind...
right now I'm going to use ntfs, but I wish somebody can help me in maybe choosing something better!

[NeddySeagoon]

[pavallokazzo]

i didn't heard problems in using journaled fs on usb, however I don't see the needs...
also, thx for that tune2fs thing caused i didn't read anywhere about saving the space for superuser in ext family...
other than, that ext2 is well supported for data recovery, while seems some tools that works this way with ext2 filesystems can cause some damage on ext3 fs...
I think I will use ext2, trying to get some good tuning...
about that, can you help with something I have to know/put on tune2fs, some options that I could use for a storage device...
i think that most of the default option are for normal use (like this 5% reserved for the superuser... who needs on a usb hd?), what are the things I can work on?
thx

[lyallp]

I use FAT32 for my USB hard drives, my reasons are
1. It works on Windoze.
2. It works on Linux.
3. It works on Mac (well, it should, I don't have one to test it).
4. I can live with the file size limitation.
5. Provides an easy mechanism to move data between systems.

I don't have NTFS on my USB hard drives because I don't trust ntfs-3g (yet) - it did not work in some cases for me at one point. I do have some NTFS filesystems mounted locally, howeve, but generally use them read-only.

I use XFS, and have done for years, on my local disks but did not even consider a *nix filesystem that could not be read by Windoze.

If the USB case is only ever going to be plugged into your linux, then why not use a journaled filesystem (ext3 is just ext2 with journaling bolted on), but if there is any chance you will unplug it and put it into some other computer, stick with FAT32 - you can't even rely on some linux machines having ext3 available, I know mine doesn't.

Fragmentation, not even something I consider. It is way over-hyped, IMO. Particularly on modern machines with multiple processes/processors - a valid argument back in the days of DOS, no longer in todays multi-tasking OS's.
_________________
...Lyall

[pathfinder]

[lyallp]

From my perspective, FAT32 is the way to go, everything can read/write it with no problems.
Viruses are a weak excuse to sacrifice portability. They are addressed by other means - virus scanners, suitable usage patterns, etc.

That said, it depends on the end use of the device. If it's only ever going to be plugged into one machine, then make it the native FS of the machine, whatever that is.

If it's going to be portable to other machines, choose the lowest common denominator - if all other machines are linux too, then whatever FS is common between them. If Windows is one of the target machines, then your choices are either NTFS or FAT32. My current view of ntfs-3g is that it's reliability is not quite there yet, so that only leaves FAT32.

I am not saying I think FAT32 is a good filesystem, but it's the only reliable common denominator, assuming sensible mounting/unmounting - no filesystem is going to be reliable if you simply turn off the usb device with no warning, particularly under linux. Some have journaling, but journaling is only applied to the fundamental filesystem structures, not to the file content itself, so relying on journaling to 'save' your data on an unexpected disconnect, is a fallacy.
_________________
...Lyall

[djinnZ]

Some info about HFS/HFS+ ?
_________________
scita et risus abundant in ore stultorum sed etiam semper severi insani sunt
mala tempora currunt...mater stultorum semper pregna est
Murpy'sLaw:If anything can go wrong, it will - O'Toole's Corollary:Murphy was an optimist

[pavallokazzo]

[pathfinder]

Hi, Sorry if I messed you up.

I meant

- in windows, to access EXT3 FS there are nice progs. One of them is called Ext2FSD or something like this (sorry, can t tell you now)

- for data recovery, exactly, you have photorec and testdisk, but you also have ddrescue (much better than dd). For data recovery in windows, personally, I use Easy Recovery Professional (I have the chance to have one in our company, and I can use it whenever I want). I loved ddrescue and it worked really well. Then, for ext3, you have a lot of ext3progs to tune it, have a look at the man page.

[irgu]