Hi chaps - looking for advise/pointers on the below…
I have a separate data disc installed, which is formatted using windows NTFS. My machine now is a full Linux box, and i was wondering if it would be worth backing up my data, and re-formatting using OpenSuse’s EXT4 [or 3] FS…?
This disc used to be from my Windows Machine, and is now being using on my Linux box as just mass data storage - movies mainly. Following swerdna’s NTSF advise on mounting/permissions, it’s working fine and mounts correctly, i can read/write fine also to it.
So my querstion is - should i convert to EXT4/3 on this disc or just run with NTFS, which is working just fine.
Specs - OpenSuse 11.2 - Disc in question is a Hitatchi / SATA2 / 350GB - Internal fitted. Just holding data, no system or ~ files being stored on this disc.
If it is working fine then (and you can read and write data to it) I would be tempted to leave it as it is.
If you re-formatted it to ext4 (little point in using ext3) - you have got the time involved to re-do it, plus if you ever needed to plug it into a windows machine in the future then it couldn’t be read.
For ntfs you will require defrag and stuff. IMHO try backing up and use ext3 instead of ext4. If you choose to dual boot in near future your windows will be able to access ext3 with tools. Ext4 is questionable still, a lot of folks had a broken partition table in Ubuntu. If you choose anything other than fat or ntfs you will be better off but then again if you wish to install windows you keep ntfs but make sure you defrag the partition once a month.
Thanks chaps for getting back so quickly. RE dual booting or using Windows, i’m not really using any Windows machines anymore at home. The passed year and a half or so, i have been slowing migrating from Windows, and onto Linux.
My storage discs [including external discs] were all initially formatted using Windows NTFS, so i may just slowly move over to Ext4 FS when i have time.
Its a bit of a challenge, finding empty discs to copy data too, verify and then copy/move back to a freshly formatted Ext4 FS disc.
Dilemma and contradiction to above is that the NTFS FS disc is working just fine.
You will get a performance boost going to a native Linux FS because access to NTFS is via the user space FUSE filesystem which slows things down. In addition you will not have glitches such as case insensitivity, or timestamps being in local time (it is possible to have UTC timestamps, but I think this has to be done at filesystem creation). So it’s advisable to move over to a Linux FS. I recommend ext4. I have not had any issues with it, it’s quite stable.
And congratulations for breaking free from Windows.
I suggest 2 partitions on the disk. If one gets messed up you can use systemresucecd to recover your data and move to other partition. I suggested ext3 for your storage partition for a fact that you will be able to access it from windows if you install those in virtualbox. Ext4 access from windows is not possible as yet. If you keep your ntfs without defrag for long, it may slow down.
If you wish to experiment and explore then I suggest you install zfs.
If you run Windows in VBox then you are running two OSes in parallel and therefore you can simply share the Linux filesystem to Windows using Samba. Then you can use any FS you like in Linux. I simply dislike the idea of Windows poking into Linux filesystems.
I faced a similar situation about a year ago, and I did backup and reformat, because NTFS was unacceptably slow for me on linux.
I’d point out that ext3&4 aren’t the only filesystems available. someone already mentioned ZFS, which is available as a user-space filesystem, and when done right is near-indestuctable. JFS is a very speedy filesystem, and I used it intially, but very few people use it. I don’t have any experience with XFS, so I can’t make any recommendations in that regard, and sadly reiserFS is dead. (sorry, couldn’t resist rotfl! )
bottom line: if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. If you do fix it, do it right, and do your homework. back up your data, and find a filesystem that’ll work best for you, performance and stability-wise.
On 2010-06-27, vmohan <vmohan@no-mx.forums.opensuse.org> wrote:
> My storage discs [including external discs] were all initially
> formatted using Windows NTFS, so i may just slowly move over to Ext4 FS
> when i have time.
>
> Its a bit of a challenge, finding empty discs to copy data too, verify
> and then copy/move back to a freshly formatted Ext4 FS disc.
You don’t mention the volume you have/use on that data drive. But the price
of a USB drive of 1 TB or more, is now so low that it’s well worth investing
in it.
Use it as a backup media, using the same FS (NTFS, EXT, whetever) as the
data drive. Use rsync.
Should you wish to format your data drive, move the data on the USB.
> Dilemma and contradiction to above is that the NTFS FS disc is working
> just fine.
You don’t need to change it. Comments about the ‘advantage’ of case
sensitivity in the file names and UTC time stamps are bollocks. Case
sensitivity is the one thing I would change in Unix/Linux. And the dates are
shown in local time, who cares if a drive in your private machine stores
them in local time or UTC?
The only real change permissions. Move to ext and you have those extra. But
do you need them for a collection of movies? Your choice.
Actually there is another reason I would not share the raw ext? volume if you are running Windows in VBox. If you do that, you are accessing the raw partition from two OSes simultaneously. I doubt if ext? is designed for that scenario. Even filesystems that are designed to be shared, like GFS and OCFS, take care to provide locking mechanisms. I’d say your chance of avoiding damage if you try to access the partition from two OSes are pretty poor. Use Samba for sharing if you still intend to run Windows in VBox.
More precisely it’s the disadvantage of case insensitivity in Windows FS. I guess you didn’t see that thread where somebody tried to mv linux Linux and it failed on NTFS. It could matter if you are doing software development because makefile and Makefile are sometimes different.
Case sensitivity is the one thing I would change in Unix/Linux.
Better set your time machine for -40 years then.
And if you have movies on it, then I would point to the lower performance of going through FUSE.
All the same, I wouldn’t go to the trouble of backup and reformatting. If it works, leave it alone. I’d just buy a new disk when the old one is running low on space and do the copy then since it’s unavoidable. Then you can recycle the old disk as you please. Maybe it’s not even worth keeping by then, disks being so cheap.
What would people be formatting their disc’s then…? My 11.1 laptop is formatted using Ext3. My other [semi-new] 11.2 desktop machine is formatted using ext4.
May if the forum had a poll feature, it would be better too see who is using what, and maybe why…? Their reason for using that FS.
Guessing for everyday use, Ext3/4 is fine - i don’t have much knowledge on Linux FS’s so i’m still learning.
On 2010-06-28, ken yap <ken_yap@no-mx.forums.opensuse.org> wrote:
>
> Rikishi42;2181853 Wrote:
>> You don’t need to change it. Comments about the ‘advantage’ of case
>> sensitivity in the file names and UTC time stamps are bollocks.
>
> More precisely it’s the disadvantage of case insensitivity in Windows
> FS. I guess you didn’t see that thread where somebody tried to mv linux
> Linux and it failed on NTFS. It could matter if you are doing software
> development because makefile and Makefile are sometimes different.
And that counts as a smart thing to do ?
>> Case sensitivity is the one thing I would change in Unix/Linux.
>
> Better set your time machine for -40 years then.
I know, too late to change.
> And if you have movies on it, then I would point to the lower
> performance of going through FUSE.
When copying to/from it, maybe. But for viewing, the speed is fixed by video
troughput anyway, so no stress there.
That’s debatable of course, like the use of tabs in Makefiles. But what is not a smart thing to do is try to do development tasks on NTFS when these things will trip you up. Like case sensitivity of Unix, the use of makefile and Makefile is not something you can change now.
