I have just purchased a 2 TB WD USB drive and I want to format with Ext3 OR Ext4 and leave a small NTFS partition in case I ever have to transfer files to some Windows machines at work.
I was wondering for what is best (meaning safer against data loss - I don’t care about the performance), Ext3 or Ext4? The partition would be probably something like 1.7 TB. If someone has practical or theoretical experience with the two file systems compared with each other, I would be very interested in hearing.
Also, has anyone ever tried encrypting such a big hard drive? I am wondering if encryption would cause big overhead and long waiting times at every use.
Thanks in advance for any opinion!
I have found the Ext4 partitions type to be very safe and at least so far, it has not failed me during power failures and other oddities. I did have a computer motherboard fail and a Ext3 partition became corrupted, but it is hard to know if the Ext4 would have done better. As for Partition types, I would indeed use a NTFS if I needed to use Windows with this drive, but not required if there is no Windows version looking at the hard drive. Since I do use Windows I normally create 4 primary partitions on a disk, if it is large and if I have only one hard drive.
MBR is generic Booting code
Primary Partition 1 is SWAP and 2-4 GB in Size
Primary Partition 2 is Ext4, 20-60 GB in Size, marked active and bootable (location of / ‘root’ folder and Grub boot loader)
Primary Partition 3 is Ext4, 120 to 250 GB, (Location of /home)
Primary Partition 4 is NTFS, 250 to 1 TB in size (Location of /Windows or /Software or what ever you want to call it)
I save everything really important on Partition 4, which can be read by Windows or Linux. When I reinstall openSUSE, I do not reformat Partition 3 (/home) unless something has gone wrong. This is the suggested setup I would use. I wait and create the NTFS partition last, on a Windows computer.
I have only a 500GB external HD. Previously FAT32, as it was shipped. I changed to ext4 and it has been a good choice so far.
My Son has a 1TB ntfs external and I have had it connected to my SUSE box and it seems OK.
No encryption in either case. Sorry.
Using encrypted partitions has practically no overhead (besides supplying passphrase to get access, and mounting in a slightly longer manner, but these are done once).
You might notice that processor is busy during a large copy, but with modern cores, the load of one core rarely reaches 40%, mostly staying in the range of 20-25%. If the processor has more than one cores, this load is not a burden.
Thank you very much everyone for the helpful replies!
I will format in Ext4, and leave a small NTFS, and will also encrypt the disk. I use it as a portable drive and I do not install any OS on it, it is only for data, thats why I thought of keeping a small NTFS. With other drives entirely Ext3 it has happened that coworkers had windows machines and could not copy my files.
BTW can older versions of Suse read Ext4? I still have a 11.1 on one computer at work.
Thanks again!!
You probably wanted to say “use an encrypted ext4 partition.”
No, older versions of opensuse cannot use ext4. 11.0 cannot, 11.1 probably cannot, 11.2 maybe can. Depends on kernel, actually. The wikipedia’s article on ext4 contains some dates and kernel versions.
Oh yeah sorry, of course I meant I will encrypt the ext4 partition of the disk. I wont actually store anything on the small NTFS partition, will only keep it as a vehicle for non private work file transfers. But I was interested in trying encryption on the partition where i store all files. So far I have used encryption on all my USB keys, which I formatted in ext3 in the past. You never know, USB keys get lost so easily. I believe encryption is the way to go for any USB keys!
Thank you, I guess its time for that computer to get upgraded to 11.3 too
On 08/16/2010 11:36 PM, G0NZ0 wrote:
>
> Oh yeah sorry, of course I meant I will encrypt the ext4 partition of
> the disk. I wont actually store anything on the small NTFS partition,
> will only keep it as a vehicle for non private work file transfers. But
> I was interested in trying encryption on the partition where i store all
> files. So far I have used encryption on all my USB keys, which I
> formatted in ext3 in the past. You never know, USB keys get lost so
> easily. I believe encryption is the way to go for any USB keys!
> Thank you, I guess its time for that computer to get upgraded to 11.3
> too
As that 2 TB disk certainly has 4KB sectors, be careful that the ext4 partition
starts on a sector that is a multiple of 8. I failed to do that with a 1 TB disk
that does have 4K sectors, and found my system pausing for 10-15 seconds with
disk activity while kjournald was the only active process. That was an 11.1
system with an ext3 file system, but I think the same principles apply.
Repartitioning fixed the problem.
Thanks lwfinger. I never happened that problem. I have other USB disks formatted in ext3, in particular a 1.5 TB, a 1 TB, and three 320 GB. The 1 TB and two 320 GB also have a small NTFS partition. But I never encountered that problem at all. Will keep in mind though, thanks!
