Cross-OS File System That Sucks Less? 449
An anonymous reader writes "I recently got an external hard disk with USB 2.0/Firewire/Firewire 800/eSATA to be used for backup and file exchange — my desktop runs Linux (with a Windows partition for games but no data worth saving), and the laptop is a MacBook Pro. So the question popped up: what kind of filesystem is best for this kind of situation? Is there a filesystem that works well under Linux, MacOS X, and Windows? Linux has HFS+ support but apparently doesn't support journaling and there's also an issue with the case-insensitivity of HFS+. Are we stuck with crummy VFAT forever or are there efforts underway to bring a modern filesystem (I'm thinking something like ZFS, BeFS, or XFS) to all platforms? Or are there other clever solutions like storing ISO images and loop-mounting those?"
Network it, or NTFS (Score:5, Informative)
Ext3 (Score:5, Informative)
I just use a external drive formatted in EXT3, and for windows files i just install the Ext3 driver.
ext2 supported everywhere (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Quick answer: No (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Network it, or NTFS (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Network it, or NTFS (Score:3, Informative)
I'd be surprised if it wasn't in Ubuntu already.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Been there, Done that (Score:5, Informative)
HFS+ can be case-sensitive (Score:3, Informative)
For quite some time now (10.3 Panther I think) there has been a case-sensitive variant of HFS+. The Linux kernel has supported mounting it for some time now since I contributed a patch after realizing I couldn't access my filesystem. Unfortunately, it does not support HFS+ journaling so you have to make sure OS X gets shut down properly. Also, the last time I looked, the open source HFS+ utilities like fsck did not handle case-sensitive HFS+. I looked into fixing it but it was such a god-awful mess of code I decided I didn't trust it anyway.
On Windows you should be able to use MacDrive but you may want to check with them to make sure that case-sensitive HFS+ is supported. I only say this because for instance Alsoft's DiskWarrior product didn't support case-sensitive HFS+ until very recently. Why, I don't know since case-sensitive HFS+ simply omits the case-folding step before determining b-tree position. It's all documented in TN1150.
Re:Ext3^H2 (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Doesn't work with a Macbook. (Score:5, Informative)
See above.
Re:Ext3 (Score:1, Informative)
Re:ext2 supported everywhere (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Quick answer: No (Score:3, Informative)
There is no problem what so ever accessing an ext2/3 partition or disk from XP, it's just not journaling when writing.
UDF (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Been there, Done that (Score:1, Informative)
If you go from lab computer to lab computer, and the terminal is restricted on Macs, you can try writing an AppleScript wrapper for the a Bash session that runs mount_ntfs. I have not tested this limited write capability and do not know if it works (or is disabled in the default binary).
One could create ISO (image) files, but those often need special permissions to mount in GNU/Linux and a mount program in Windows; this is a difficulty in restricted environments.
From the mount_ntfs man page:
There is limited writing ability. Limitations: file must be nonresident
and must not contain any sparces (uninitialized areas); compressed files
are also not supported.
SEE ALSO
mount(2), unmount(2), fstab(5), mount(8), mount_msdosfs(8)
CAVEATS
This utility is primarily used for read access to an NTFS volume. See
the WRITING section for details about writing to an NTFS volume.
HISTORY
The mount_ntfs utility first appeared in FreeBSD 3.0.
AUTHORS
The NTFS kernel implementation, mount_ntfs utility, and manual were writ-
ten by Semen Ustimenko .
BSD November 11, 2004 BSD
Re:Doesn't work with a Macbook. (Score:5, Informative)
UFS / FFS (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Why not just use ext2? (Score:5, Informative)
FAT is really the only viable option at the moment. The problem there is that you will be limited to files 2GB in size. Have a DVD image you want to access from all three platforms? Forget it. You'll either have to burn it to a DVD or use FTP, because SAMBA is limited by the same 2GB limit.
Someone else posted a response about using UDF. I'll have to look into that, but I'm not sure OS X or Windows will format a hard drive to UDF. Well, at least not with OS X's "Disk Utility" application.
Re:Moving Target - ntfs-3g (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Doesn't work with a Macbook. (Score:3, Informative)
All experience I have had, and have heard of, shows it to be robust and bug-free.
Thad
Re:Network it, or NTFS (Score:4, Informative)
http://code.google.com/p/macfuse/ [google.com]
http://www.ntfs-3g.org/ [ntfs-3g.org]
Here is a set of instructions to get it working, it mentions much older versions, but the idea is the same:
http://www.lifehack.org/articles/lifehack/how-to-
Re:Network it, or NTFS (Score:5, Informative)
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:You're not very smart, are you? (Score:2, Informative)
And I understand perfectly well that windows is built off NT now. In fact, that virus infected, featureless, resource hog Windows XP was based off of NT too. Didn't seem to do much for it.
Re:ext2 supported everywhere (Score:3, Informative)
ext2 is better than NTFS? Seriously? Have you been eating the yellow snow or something? (I'll give you that ext2 is better than Fat32, but then again nearly everything is.)
for windows, http://www.fs-driver.org/ [fs-driver.org]
You have an interesting definition of the word "supported." From the FAQ:
and for osx http://sourceforge.net/projects/ext2fsx/ [sourceforge.net]
I've tried that before. It kernel panics my G5, so I uninstalled it post-haste. Maybe it's better now, but it used to suck ass.
Re:You're not very smart, are you? (Score:2, Informative)
See here you are already showing your inexperience. It isn't that a FS won't fragment, even if the FS is good and 'tries' not to. The issue comes down to how the FS deals with fragmented files and lookup processes that are required to access additional file fragments. For example some FS are horrible at this because they have to play 'where is next chunk' or let's follow the maze around the HD.
The thing here is that NTFS fragments just like all other FS, even though it does try to anticipate file usage and tries to write to a unfragmented area.
However, the performance knock with fragmentation is in how much it 'costs' to access a fragmented file versus one that isn't, and in this regard NTFS is very good and the cost is very 'light' in comparison to several types of file systems, especially older ones like FAT.
So even if NTFS is fragmented to hell, the decrease in performance is going to be MINIMAL, that is why it was 'never' important and on modern HD and hardware is still less important for average desktop users.
Yes MS started shipping a defrag tool for NT in Win2k, but it is honestly more important and used more for high use and load files and PROPERLY ordering them on the HD as the OS and applications that use them would benefit from the placement.
So this has more to do with boot optimization and file layout and with XP and Vista with regard to prefetch and superfetch and less to do with the 'tiny' performance difference from a file that has 10 fragments and moving it so it only has 1.
Truly go look up fragmentation, this whole post is getting really old.
It is also getting old that you 'magically' would fix computers because 'you' knew what was wrong with them by 'reinstalling' a backup.
You may have solved problems, but it would have been from tweaking and restoring the installation from an OS install than ANYTHING to do with NTFS and you are either fooling yourself or your friends.
Take this advice from someone that has 'truly' worked in the tech industry with NT and NTFS since it was Alpha, not just a couple of years at college.
As you will find with most people at SlashDot, you may be your parent's computer genius, but you can easily find yourself out of your league here quickly.
Was discussed couple of years ago. (Score:3, Informative)
That was discussed couple of years ago and there were no solution found. I mean FAT32 is no solution - more of a problem. Albeit being read by most if not all OSs.
Many people in past had recommended for OS specific stuff to use ZIP archives (since they are also universally available). Additionally to preserve verbatim information from *nix/MacOS volumes you can create disk image (laying on FAT32 volume). All decent OSs allow you to mount such disk images. Formats are different so it is not portable solution to preserve not portable OS-specific information about files.
Just to reiterate FAT32 is more or less only such solution.
P.S. I have looked also into ext2 support. In MacOS 10.3.x there were no official drivers (nor such drivers materialized in 10.4). Second party solution (I found only one) crashed my MacOS during installation and didn't worked in the end. For Windows there are multiple working ext2 solutions. Though not nice, yet allowing you to extract your files from ext2 volume. Not fitting for usual everyday work - but passable.
Re:Windows is the limitation (Score:2, Informative)
Goddamn, will people stop saying this?!? I've formatted a 200GB hard drive as FAT with the Windows XP installer. There is no 32GB limit.
OK, here is the Real Deal:
Other references: Limitations of the FAT32 File System [microsoft.com], Raymond Chen [microsoft.com], NTFS vs FAT. [ntfs.com]