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Filesystems For Removable Disks?

Posted by Cliff on Wed Aug 13, 2003 05:55 PM
from the platters-on-the-go dept.
Data Storage Operating Systems Portables Software Hardware
An anonymous reader asks: "I have recently (as in today ) acquired a 250GB external HD with both USB2 and Firewire ports, with an eye to using it to carry around all my stuff (my humungous e-mail archive, ISO images of whetever distro I'm running, music and work files - I do a lot of database work, so I often need to move 40GB+ database dumps). The thing is, In order to make proper use of it I have to be able to mount and write to it on all three platforms I use: Windows (easy, it comes formatted as FAT32), Linux (trivial mount syntax) and Mac OS X (it just works as is, since it also supports FAT32). However, I'd like to get rid of FAT32." What filesystems, aside from the FAT varieties, have decent support across the major operating systems?

"The disk comes factory-formatted (Windows doesn't allow you to format a disk this big as a single FAT32 partition), and even though I'm not running against any FAT32 limitations yet, I was wondering if there was a better filesystem to use. NTFS would be perfect (given its rock-solid transaction support - always useful on an external drive), but the Linux versions are far from reliable for large file writes and Mac OS X lacks it. ext3 isn't supported on Windows or the Mac (as far as I know).

In short, my requirements are:

  • The filesystem must be read/write for Windows, Linux and Mac
  • The disk must have a single partition
  • There must be tools available for all three OSs to format the HD with that filesystem in case something goes wrong and I'm away from home base
However, if I'm to be stuck with FAT32, I'd appreciate pointers to utilities for reformatting the HD with a single 250GB partition for Mac OS X and Windows (the built-in Disk Manager only lets me format 40GB partitions in FAT32, to force people to move to NTFS)."
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  • hm (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 13 2003, @05:57PM (#6690362)
    Fat32 works across all, so I cannot use it.

    OK.

    • Re:hm (Score:3, Informative)

      by shaitand (626655)
      FAT32 has some severe limitations, one I'm sure that is ringing in his head is the 2gb file limitation.

      not to mention other things (although for the purpose carry crap from one place to another it's probably good enough), speed, stability, security, etc. Although NTFS sucks as well, at least it's better than fat32...
      • Besides which, you really want a journalling file system when sudden disconnection or loss of power is an issue, which it certainly is on a portable drive. Actually, you want a journalling file system, period. Now that Microsoft has EOLed its DOS legacy OSs, old-fashioned file systems just don't have anything going for them -- except inertia.

        I'm curious to know why you think NTFS sucks. Because Mister Bill owns it? Not that it really matters -- you can't access it from any non-NT OS.

  • The question reworded (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 13 2003, @05:59PM (#6690372)
    Hello, I currently have a portable storage system working just fine with FAT32 across three different platforms. However, this is much too easy to me and I'd like to bash Windows at the same time, so I'm asking for advice on how to make my life difficult and go with some obscure filesystem which won't have many third-party tools available to alter it if something goes wrong.

    Have you ever heard "If it ain't broke, don't fix it?"

    If not, can you at least tell me WHY you want to break a good thing? It works FINE for you in all 3 OSes! Is your question a troll? If so, damn fine work!
    • The important fact that you're missing is that it IS broke.

      He can't reformat the drive as a single partition. Perhaps you missed the parts where he said "the built-in Disk Manager only lets me format 40GB partitions in FAT32" and "I do a lot of database work, so I often need to move 40GB+ database dumps". That's a serious usability problem.

      Also, and I know this is hard to believe, there are very good reasons for not wanting to use FAT, especially in a professional situation where something like, say, not

      • So don't do the formating on Windows. Duh. (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        The important fact that you're missing is that it IS broke.

        He can't reformat the drive as a single partition. Perhaps you missed the parts where he said "the built-in Disk Manager only lets me format 40GB partitions in FAT32" and "I do a lot of database work, so I often need to move 40GB+ database dumps". That's a serious usability problem.

        He's obviously using two other OSes without that artificial 40GB limit. He could just use one of them when he needs to format.

      • Re:The question reworded (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Zocalo (252965) on Thursday August 14 2003, @06:14AM (#6693745) Homepage
        Actually, he *can* reformat the drive as a single FAT32 partition, and use it on all OSes, since he's not running into a physical limitation of FAT32 but rather a deliberate design limitation. "The built-in Disk Manager" bit means he's running NT/XP and IIRC Microsoft has deliberately limited Disk Manager's FAT32 partitions in an effort to encourage people to move to the more advanced NTFS system. Despite this NT/XP is perfectly happy to access FAT32 partitions *much* bigger than 40GB, as long as they are created elsewhere.

        I have successfully created FAT32 partitions in excess of 100GB and mounted them under XP using Partition Magic, Linux's *fdisk tools, and Windows 9x. We're talking a removable drive here, so it's not going to be too much hassle to partition the drive on another OS (it's the partitioning that's the problem, not formatting).

        A simple process of elimination shows that FAT32 is the most portable filesystem that offers a realistic level of confidence that your OS wont trash the data. It may not be the most sophisticated system out there, but unfortunately that's the price you pay for portability at present. Plus it has the added benefit that it's accessible from a single DOS/Linux boot disk in emergencies - something that's save my ass on numerous occassions.

    • Er, another good reason for FAT32 sucking balls is the 2Gb file size limit.

      My nice backup solution (tar --create /home/ | gzip > /mnt/backup/filename.tar.gz) had to become a little more complex because of this...

      (ok so for anyone else in a similar boat, 'man split' should help)
      • Or you could just make a .tar of each individual user's directory, so long as they're less than 2Gb each.

        Use a perl script (or a BASH script - whatever) to read the contents of the /home directory, and create the aforementioned .tar files out of the contents, for directories which can accomodate the 2Gb limit. Leave out any directories that don't, and iterate over them after the first-level backup is complete.

        Assuming that the first-level backup (over the /home directory with other directories that meet t

  • Windows is your limiting factor (Score:5, Insightful)

    by TheSHAD0W (258774) on Wednesday August 13 2003, @06:00PM (#6690385) Homepage
    With Windows, your choices are FAT16, FAT32 and NTFS. NTFS isn't amazingly portable, so you're pretty much stuck.
    • There are however, some projects out there [google.com] to bring other filesystems to windows. The problem is the relative immaturity of them. You'd think that at least a portion of linux enthusiasts would appreciate being able to view ext2 from win32. But I guess its considered fratenizing with the enemy. Even if it would make installing linux from a running system that much easier.
      • But I guess its considered fratenizing with the enemy.

        The problem is not so much the fraternizing, but the fact that the installable file system interface documentation is not available to your average open source hacker. The IFS Kit costs $899 + S&H [microsoft.com]. You just can't integrate other file systems cleanly without these docs.

        In fact, there are utilities to read ext2 [swin.edu.au] and ISO9660 [isobuster.com] FSs, but they are stand-alone and require you to extract the files to your native partition before they can be used.

      • If you wanted to share the disk only between Mac OSX and Linux, you'd have lots of different choices, since both are easily extensible and lots of people have done that extending. But between Mac and Windows, or Linux and Windows, your choices are limited. Therefore, Windows is the limiting factor.

      • With Linux, your choices are ext2, ext3, jfs, reiserfs, vfat, xfs. None of these are portable at all, so you have to go with the portable filesystem.

        #
        # File systems
        #
        CONFIG_AUTOFS_FS
        CONFIG_REISERFS_FS
        CONFIG_ADFS_FS
        CONFIG_AFFS_FS
        CONFIG_HFS_FS
        CONFIG_BEFS_FS
        CONFIG_BFS_FS
        CONFIG_EXT3_FS
        CONFIG_JBD
        CONFIG_FAT_FS
        CONFIG_MSDOS_FS
        CONFIG_UMSDOS_FS
        CONFIG_VFAT_FS
        CONFIG_EFS_FS
        CONFIG_JFFS_FS
        CONFIG_CRAMFS
        CONFIG_TMPFS
        CONFIG_RAMFS
        CONFIG_ISO9660_FS
        CONFIG_ZISOFS
        CONFIG_JFS_FS
        CONFIG_MINIX_FS
        CONFIG_VXFS_
      • Err, no, sorry. ext2/3 is accessable from at least FreeBSD and OpenBSD. jfs is binary compatible with IBM's jfs that is used on AIX. vfat is fat32+long file names (which is portable pretty much universally), xfs is binary compatible with SGI's xfs on IRIX.

        You conspicuously left out UFS, which is the "native" filesystem for BSD derivatives.

        Don't forget FreeVxFS which is binary compatible with the commercial VxFS available on both HPUX and Solaris (others too?).

        Then there's HFS and HFS+, which Apple use

      • Re:Windows is your limiting factor (Score:4, Informative)

        by GiMP (10923) on Wednesday August 13 2003, @06:25PM (#6690533) Homepage
        Linux supports ext*, fat*, iso9660 xfs, jfs, reiserfs, efs, isofs, ufs, udf (experimental), minix, VxFS, HPFS, HFS, HFS+ (limited?), QNX, ntfs (limited), BFS, Amiga FFS, ADFS, BeFS, and finally System V/Xenix/V7/Coherent FS (that is a long one!).
        MacOS 10.x supports HFS, HFS+, UDF, ISO9660, AFS, and FAT*
        Windows XP supports ISO9660, NTFS, FAT*, and UDF.

        I believe that MacOS and Windows both require 3rd party software to use UDF.. but I could be wrong about that.

        The solutions would be FAT*, ISO9660, and UDF. ISO9660 is read-only and I've never heard of someone using UDF on a harddrive (it is for those 'direct cds' you might have seen). FAT* sucks, but it works everywhere. It might be worth the effort to see if UDF could be used at all, but a small FAT32 partition would have to be made to accomodate the utilities for using it on the target system.

        Before everyone flames the story submiter for being bias against Microsoft, the issue is that FAT really does suck and it would be great if there was something else that everyone supported.

        Personally, I'd like to have a 6 gigabyte external (usb/firewire) harddrive that I could boot MacOS9 from AND share it between Linux and Windows computer. I guess I'll keep dreaming for a while :)
      • Windows is the limiting factor. Microsoft supports FAT in all it's incarnations and NTFS and that is it. That would tend to make it the limiting factor. Windows does not support the Mac OSX filesystems, or the Linux EXT2, EXT3, Reiser, XFS, JFS, etc. filesystems. So yes, Windows is indeed the limiting factor and there is NO DOUBT about it. Period. With that out of the way, Dynamic Volume support is something you run FAT or NTFS on top of, so you have no idea what you are talking about. So sorry. Thank you f

  • NTFS (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Supported on variety of operating systems, including Windows 2000 Professional, Windows 2000 Server, Windows 2000 Advanced Server, Windows 2000 Datacenter, Windows 2003 Server, Windows XP Home, Windows XP Professional, Windows 2003 Server Web Editition and many, many others.
  • To all of you saying "FAT works fine", consider that the OP may be asking the question because he wants a filesystem that's faster, more reliable or perhaps more secure (encrypted?) than FAT. Just because FAT works doesn't mean it works the best. He's asking if there are any alternatives, besides what he's already using.

    • Re:Give it a rest! (Score:4, Interesting)

      by torpor (458) <(jayv) (at) (synth.net)> on Wednesday August 13 2003, @06:15PM (#6690474) Homepage Journal
      Right, exactly. This isn't a 'switch', its a 'compare'.

      I myself am very interested in the answer. I wonder if the solution may be to have an ext3 (or xfs, or jffs) shim for Win32, also?

      Man, if only there were an *open*, *journaled*, *fast* and *efficient* filesystem which all 3 OS's were allowed to play well with.

      Seems to me if the answer to this "Ask Slashdot" ends up being "just use FAT32", then there's an opportunity for a decent OSS project: completely open, cross-platform, fast, journaled filesystem, with code tarballs for all major platforms.

      Hmmm...

  • fat32 is your best bet. (Score:5, Informative)

    by dougmc (70836) <dougmc+slashdot@frenzied.us> on Wednesday August 13 2003, @06:15PM (#6690475) Homepage
    Like it or not, fat32 is the only option that works on all the OSs in question and doesn't cost extra money.

    Your other options include Paragon's Mount Everything [mount-everything.com] and their Ext2fs Everywhere [ext2fs-anywhere.com] (which is really just a subset of `Mount Everything'.) These programs let you mount ext2/ext3 under Windows, or let you mount NTFS under Linux (I don't know how good that is -- I know that Linux has some NTFS support itself, but know it's not very mature.)

    If that's not clear enough -- if you want to spend some money, spend it with Paragon and you can use ext3 or NTFS. If not, stick with fat32.

    • On the one hand, you jumped to assumptions. The word "free" doesn't appear anywhere in the story. And why should it? This guy is some well-paid database wonk who owns a $200 portable disk drive that he goes around connecting to a lot of (probably expensive) computers. Why should he balk at spending $40 for a product that solves his problem so neatly?

      I'm probably gonna buy a copy myself. Thanks for telling me about it. Keep up the good work, and please read more carefully.

  • If what you want to do with the *data* on this external drive is copy to/from the other three platforms, then maybe having a Knoppix CD (or homegrown) that can mount your external drive (XFS), plus can mount any of the other filesystem types needed, and can transfer the data. At this time, AFAIK, only the NTFS writing is not considered safe. But it may be soon.

    In other words, look at the problem from a tools perspective, not a filesystem perspective.

    • That should be CDs (plural), one for each platform.
      • Actually that's two cd's, one for intel, one for mac, and that covers what he is asking for... the cd's boot linux which supports an astronomical number of filesystems... he can boot linux off the cd and use it copy the data, he doesn't need native tools for the os... that's the idea anyway.
  • as well as using ext3 under linux.

    See here for general info:
    http://www.ibiblio.org/mdw/HOWTO/Filesystem s-HOWTO -6.html
    And here for windows tools, but read the link... First.
    http://www.it.fht-esslingen.de/~zimmerma/s oftware/ ltools.htm
    And finally for OSX:
    http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/m acosx/ 18619

    Play nice and have fun!
  • you are indeed stuck with fat32 as others have stated. It is the only filesystem that works on all 3 platforms. If you want to format the whole drive as one partition here's a hint. FDISK. I'm tired of all these people using partition magic or other pussified partitioning programs. Get a win98 boot disk or a linux disc and use fdisk. *gasp*!!!
    • Boot disk does not cut it. You need a full fledged Win98 installation, as the USB hard isks are only supported from windows and not from boot disk.

      You could use a small linux bootable cd, like knoppix. That one already has fdisk, etc. Hopefully USB mass storage supoort as well.
  • I bet there is a way to trick it into being formatted like a giant CD-RW or DVD-RW or something.

    I suggest looking into that, as all oses should be able to read one of the standard CD formats...
  • Ext2 may work- see my sig for windows ext2 driver (somewhat mature), and ext2fsx [sf.net] for a OS X driver. Since the OS X ext2 driver seems somewhat unstable, I would guess that fat32 is your best bet. Since I've never had any reason to work with a partition size bigger than 20GB before, I don't know what would allow you to format the disk that way (unless a mkvfatfs or suchlike under linux does the job).

    I really wish people would give more support to those who are trying to develop cross-platform filesystems. If
  • I can't speak for OS X, but there is a piece of software available for Windows that will let you access an ext2 or ext3 drive - Paragon's Ext2FS Anywhere (http://www.ext2fs.com/). I've heard it works quite well, but I've never seen it tried with a removeable drive. Be careful to shut down cleanly, though, or you risk screwing the filesystem up big. It says it has just added support for files of >4GB, although I thought the ext2 limit was 2GB. Something to look into.
  • Try the command line format tool (intuitively called format.exe). I don't believe it has the "migration encouragement" limitations of the GUI tool, but I don't have a spare >40G partition to check for you. Note that if the problem is *creating* a large FAT32 partition (rather than just formatting it), you may need to first *create* it as an NTFS (or unformatted) partition and then re-format it.

    Other than that, any of the other platforms available should be able to format the partition if you so desire

  • I have an 80GB file server and have 4 partitions on it. Hey partitions get fragmented, become bad, get crashed etc. You dont want all your data to be at risk there. Say somehow a large block gets deleted or bad sectors, the worst that can happen is the partition falls with it. And I'm sure your data is classified like emails, mp3s, games so you could divide them among the partitions easy.

    Still need a more elegent solution than FAT32, put zipslack in a smallish FAT32 and boot into Linux there (or knoppix li

  • How about 2 out of 3? ;) (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Yaztromo (655250) <yaztromo@@@jsyncmanager...org> on Thursday August 14 2003, @12:04AM (#6692604) Homepage Journal

    Okay -- this one is purely for the "FWIW" file...

    You could run NT's other original filesystem, HPFS. Linux has decent HPFS support available, the allocation unit is a 512b sector, and it's organized for fast searches and minimal fragmentation. It can also format up to 64GB partitions (although it still has a 2GB filesize limit).

    The trick is to get HPFS support for Windows. To do this, you need to get the driver files from Windows NT v3.x (something that, admittedly I'm not sure works with Windows versions > NT 4. I don't do Windows personally, so I haven't tested it -- like I said above, FWIW). That will give you two of the three OSs supported. HPFS has been around for a while, (circa 1988), so you might be able to find something from the Intel FreeBSD world you could port to OS X.

    I use HPFS for my 100MB ZIP disks (which I admittedly rarely use anymore for anything than quick archival purposes). It's not journalled, but it uses a bidirectional sector pointer system, so chaining errors are amost always fixable. The big downside is that if the filesystem is dirty, checking it can take a huge amount of time.

    It's probably not a practical solution (I didn't and won't claim it is), but it's still a slightly more constructive answer than "Your stuck with FAT32" :).

    Yaz.

  • ext2 (Score:3, Informative)

    by Ann Coulter (614889) on Thursday August 14 2003, @10:40AM (#6695622) Journal
    You could use the ext2 filesystem. Mac OS X Ext2 Filesystem [sourceforge.net] is a beta and Explore2efs [swin.edu.au] is available for Windows.
    • But then, Jaguar is the current version of OSX, and it does not AFAIK have NTFS support. Maybe Pathern (10.3) will? ;-)

      I think you've about nailed it though: while there are a lot of valid criteria for selecting a good filesystem (security, permissions, metadata, etc), one of them in this case has to be portability, and without the help of third party software, no version of Windows has support for anything other than FAT* or NTFS. And while NTFS isn't such a bad filesystem, incomplete support for NTFS's s

      • FAT32 can't have files larger than 2gb

      Unfortunately, same goes for ext2 in general. You can compile your kernel with large file support, but your applications and filesystem drivers need to support it as well.
      • Unfortunately, same goes for ext2 in general. You can compile your kernel with large file support, but your applications and filesystem drivers need to support it as well.

        It is true that applications need to support large files, however the most important applications already do. And ext2 does support files larger than 2GB. I just created a 17247252480 bytes file on my /boot filesystem (the only with ext2). This is the maximum with 1k blocks. The limit is caused by the maximum number of blocks addressabl
    • Yeah, Windows sucks. I think I may have heard this mentioned once or twice before. What I don't get is how that's relevent to the discussion. We're trying to solve a technical problem here, not fantasize about some perfect world where the problem doesn't exist.

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