Linux Hard Drive Format

what is the difference between ext2 and ext3? im going to install 9.1 on a new hard drive and i'm using partition magic to format it.

DO NOT use Partition Magic to install SuSE, it doesn't work. It will just currupt your installation and all other partitions on that hard drive, that happened to me the first I installed linux a couple months ago.

Best thing to do is let the SuSE installation software take you though the steps.

I vote reiserfs. This is an excurpt about file systems from the Gentoo install docs:

ext2 is the tried and true Linux filesystem but doesn't have metadata journaling, which means that routine ext2 filesystem checks at startup time can be quite time-consuming. There is now quite a selection of newer-generation journaled filesystems that can be checked for consistency very quickly and are thus generally preferred over their non-journaled counterparts. Journaled filesystems prevent long delays when you boot your system and your filesystem happens to be in an inconsistent state.

ext3 is the journaled version of the ext2 filesystem, providing metadata journaling for fast recovery in addition to other enhanced journaling modes like full data and ordered data journaling. ext3 is a very good and reliable filesystem. It has an additional hashed b-tree indexing option that enables high performance in almost all situations. In short, ext3 is an excellent filesystem.

ReiserFS is a B*-tree based filesystem that has very good overall performance and greatly outperforms both ext2 and ext3 when dealing with small files (files less than 4k), often by a factor of 10x-15x. ReiserFS also scales extremely well and has metadata journaling. As of kernel 2.4.18+, ReiserFS is solid and usable as both general-purpose filesystem and for extreme cases such as the creation of large filesystems, the use of many small files, very large files and directories containing tens of thousands of files.

XFS is a filesystem with metadata journaling which comes with a robust feature-set and is optimized for scalability. We only recommend using this filesystem on Linux systems with high-end SCSI and/or fibre channel storage and an uninterruptible power supply. Because XFS aggressively caches in-transit data in RAM, improperly designed programs (those that don't take proper precautions when writing files to disk and there are quite a few of them) can lose a good deal of data if the system goes down unexpectedly.

JFS is IBM's high-performance journaling filesystem. It has recently become production-ready and there hasn't been a sufficient track record to comment positively nor negatively on its general stability at this point.

I agree with Toniee though, don't use partition magic to format the drive.

You can use Partition Magic to resize a Windows partition, but leave the rest of the drive empty and let SuSE take care of it from there.

I chose ReiserFS but after the install, I have done some reading and I think I will use JFS next time.

but when i tried to install with the suse cd, it wouldnt work. it actually made the hard drive un-accesable from the computer i used. now that i have a second computer, i need to reformat the drive and that is in fat32. i can try to use the suse cd again, but id prefer to format it before i try to install the OS. but, since im new to this, i will take your advice... sounds like i should try the suse cd again?

msclman99,

To dual-boot XP/Linux, this is what I did with PM 8.0 on a 120 GB Western Digital drive.

1. Make a 30 GB approx primary partition for XP.

2. Format the rest of the drive into one extended partition containing three (roughly) equal
sized logical partitions FAT32: delete the last logical partition : Linux will install (unless
you tell it different, in the deleted logical partition.

3 Install Suse 9.1 pro. Welcome to freedom!

Originally posted by zootmo@Nov 17 2004, 14:45
msclman99,

To dual-boot XP/Linux, this is what I did with PM 8.0 on a 120 GB Western Digital drive.

1. Make a 30 GB approx primary* partition for XP.

2. Format the rest of the drive into one extended partition containing three (roughly) equal* * * * * *
* * sized logical partitions FAT32: delete the last logical partition : Linux will install (unless*
* * you tell it different, in the deleted logical partition.
* *
3 Install Suse 9.1 pro. Welcome to freedom!

im going to dual boot at some point, id like to try it out on a fresh hard drive first but i guess it doesnt matter. then comes another question, im pretty sure i read that linux can READ NTFS format but not write to it. what about FAT 32?

edit: because i have a lot of stuff(pictures, movies, games(i know most wont work) etc.) on another hard drive that id like to be able to use.

Linux can read and write to FAT32.

Adding to Bruizer's comment:

Linux can read NTFS but not write.

exactly what i needed to know, thanks everyone!!!!!