Best Filesystem For External Back-Up Drives?

rufey writes "I've recently embarked on a project to rip my DVD and CD collection to a pair of external USB drives. One drive will be used on a daily basis to access the rips of music and DVDs, as well as store backups of all of my other data. The second drive will be a copy of the first drive, to be synced up on a monthly basis and kept at a different location. The USB drives that I purchased for this are 1 TB in size and came pre-formatted with FAT32. While I can access this filesystem from all of my Windows and Linux machines, there are some limitations." Read on for the rest, and offer your advice on the best filesystem for this application.

"Namely, the file size on a FAT32 filesystem is limited to 4GB (4GB less 1 byte to be technical). I have some files that are well over that size that I want to store, mostly raw DVD video. I'll primarily be using these drives on a Linux-based system, and initially, with a Western Digital Live TV media player. I can access a EXT3 filesystem from both of these, and I'm thinking about reformatting to EXT3. But on Windows, it requires a 3rd party driver to access the EXT3 filesystem. NTFS is an option, but the Linux kernel NTFS drivers (according to the kernel build documentation) only have limited NTFS write support, only being safe to overwrite existing files without changing the file size). The Linux-NTFS project may be able to mitigate my NTFS concerns for Linux, but I haven't had enough experience with it to feel comfortable. At some point I'd like whatever filesystem I use to be accessible to Apple's OS X. With those constraints in mind, which filesystem would be the best to use? I realize that there will always be some compatibility problems with whatever I end up with. But I'd like to minimize these issues by using a filesystem that has the best multi-OS support for both reading and writing, while at the same time supporting large files."

NTFS

[Hamsterdan]

THat's what I use here. for MAC, there's NTFS-3G (free) or Paragon ($ but faster on writes).

I use NTFS on both my machines (Win/OS X/Linux) without any problems.

NTFS-3G is also available for Linux.

Re:The solution..

[rpresser]

It might if irregardless was actually a word.

Re:The solution..

[David Gerard]

+1 to this answer.

This is what SAMBA is for. My home network has a mix of Ubuntu, Mac OS and Windows. It just serves to all of them without problems.

I'm using a small silent PC as the server. Plug the USB drive into it, plug the USB turntable into it (and the cassette deck into the turntable) for ripping LPs and tapes, it's lovely.

SMB over wifi serves fast enough to play MPEG4 video on the laptop and keep the toddler amused.

Re:The solution..

[babblefrog]

I've seen it used multiple times in this discussion. That makes it a word.

Re:The solution..

[uglyduckling]

Irregardless is nonsense caused by confusion between the words irrespective and regardless.

Re:The solution..

[EdIII]

I've seen it used multiple times in this discussion. That makes it a word.

ummmm. okay. "Fugnutish". Let's keep it going a few more replies and I gots my new word :)

Re:The solution..

[Jeff Carr]

You can't just create words out of the blue. People will never be able to grok your meaning if you do. You know I'm right, so don't be all fugnutish about it.

Re:The solution..

[Anonymous Coward]

Speaking of "stupid". You're should be your.

NTFS-3G works fine

[SlightOverdose]

NTFS-3G, which should come standard in most distros, should be able to read and write NTFS perfectly. It's considered very stable. That said, my personal solution to this problem was to use EXT2 and install EXT2IFS on my windows machines. I had a small FAT32 partition on the USB disk with the EXT2 driver installers for Windows and MacOS, so if I ever need to read it on another computer I don't have to download anything.

Re:Ext3

[randallman]

NTFS is recommended several times in response to this article and it troubles me. The next de facto portable filesystem standard is being determined by us in the same way mp3 was made a standard. Ask yourself if you really want to see NTFS become the standard? Personally I'd rather see a truly open filesystem become standard and I really don't want to see Microsoft have the leverage to make more patent threats. If you agree with me and have some integrity, please recommend an open standard.

Re:The solution..

[MightyYar]

Irregardlessly, it is funny.

Re:The solution..

[zogger]

Those defortunate wooshers must have disirregarded all previal sarcatically full replitations yoused hear. I agreed, be-shortened bus haul of flaim.

Re:Hi! Mods? I'm Off-Topic

[Blakey Rat]

Bravo!

Now how about applying it to all the other posts in this fucking useless thread that are off-topic?

Re:NTFS and Compress

[MightyYar]

I would recommend NTFS.

That is the best solution to read from, but he says that he's going to primarily be using this from Linux - so NTFS might still be a bit risky.

I would also recommend that you get an open source program and compress the dvd's to approx. 700MB for up to 90 minutes and 1.4GB over 90 mins. H264/ac3 or Xvid are good codecs to use.

A couple of points here. First, why would he specify a file size unless he was going to put the movies on CDs? He'd be far better off simply using a constant-quality encoder, which would have the additional benefit of not requiring a second or third pass for optimal quality. Second, why recompress in this day and age? A 1TB drive can hold over 100 double-layer DVD movies... and if he has more DVDs than that, then the cost of a bigger/additional drive is minor compared to the cost of the collection...

mp3 files are like .jpg image files such that they lose a little quality/data each time they are copied

This is simply not true. Neither mp3s nor jpegs lose quality or data when copied. They only lose quality when they are re-encoded - just as you are proposing he do with his DVDs. DVDs are heavily compressed using MPEG2. Converting to MPEG4 or H264 is exactly the same as taking an MP3 and converting it to AAC or OGG - there will be quality loss no matter how well the encode is done.

Re:Ext3

[osu-neko]

NTFS is recommended several times in response to this article and it troubles me. The next de facto portable filesystem standard is being determined by us in the same way mp3 was made a standard. Ask yourself if you really want to see NTFS become the standard?

No, but that's not really relevant.

Personally I'd rather see a truly open filesystem become standard and I really don't want to see Microsoft have the leverage to make more patent threats. If you agree with me and have some integrity, please recommend an open standard.

Can't reconcile the contradiction in that request. There's no open standard that satisfies the need, so I would have to abandon my integrity to make a dishonest recommendation that I like for its openness. If I want to maintain my integrity, I need to make an honest recommendation that accords with the truth, even if it's an unpleasant truth. For the desired purpose, the sad truth is your best bet is NTFS. I wish that weren't so, I would hope that in a few years some open standard would emerge, but I'd be dishonest to answer with wishful thinking rather than fact.

nice...

[ZenDragon]

This is the kind of topic that SHOULD be on slashdot. And no Im not being sarcastic. Something informational that might benefit everybody, dispite all the bickering in the subsequent posts! There's one thing you can count on with slashdot readers, dispite how arrogant most of us are, or how ignorant most are when it comes to politicial information - We usually know our shit when it comes to computer stuff! :)

Re:The solution..

[socz]

You must be knew hear....

:P

Re:NTFS linux driver will always be quirky

[yoyhed]

AFAIK, Windows 7 doesn't make NTFS partitions it comes across into Dynamic volumes (which is probably what you mean by "enhancing"), which would make them unreadable on Linux.

Maybe the directories you were trying to access were NTFS versions of symlinks, "junctions"? I've had trouble using them in Linux, and I know Win7 has them in place for backwards compatibility ('C:\Documents and Settings' points to 'C:\Users', for example).