LinuxQuestions.org
Review your favorite Linux distribution.
Go Back   LinuxQuestions.org > Forums > Linux Forums > Linux - General
User Name
Password
Linux - General This Linux forum is for general Linux questions and discussion.
If it is Linux Related and doesn't seem to fit in any other forum then this is the place.

Notices


Reply
  Search this Thread
Old 07-03-2008, 03:30 PM   #1
digity
Member
 
Registered: Apr 2005
Posts: 105

Rep: Reputation: 15
need better solution than FAT32 home server


I have a FAT32 formatted 1 TB IDE RAID 0 drive set up (2x500GB) in my Ubuntu 7.10 home server (used mainly for media storage and streaming). the problem is you can't set individual permissions on files and folders stored on a mounted FAT32 drive (you can only set permissions on the drive itself) and the 4 GB file size limit is becoming a real pain.

The main reason why I even formatted the drive as FAT32 was just in case I wanted or needed to move the drive back to a Windows computer and I didn't [and still don't] know how well ext3 is supported (in terms of reading and writing to a ext3 drive itself) under Windows.

So, either way I need to move away from FAT32 because of the limitations mentioned above. Will ext3 solve those issues and is reading and writing to a ext3 drive stable and reliable under Windows (just in case)? Or do I need to look at another format altogether?

TIA

P.S. - no NTFS please
 
Old 07-03-2008, 04:24 PM   #2
MensaWater
LQ Guru
 
Registered: May 2005
Location: Atlanta Georgia USA
Distribution: Redhat (RHEL), CentOS, Fedora, CoreOS, Debian, FreeBSD, HP-UX, Solaris, SCO
Posts: 7,831
Blog Entries: 15

Rep: Reputation: 1669Reputation: 1669Reputation: 1669Reputation: 1669Reputation: 1669Reputation: 1669Reputation: 1669Reputation: 1669Reputation: 1669Reputation: 1669Reputation: 1669
No NTFS

No ext3

You don't really leave a lot of options do you?

Can you explain why you don't want NTFS given that it is natively supported under Windows and supported via Samba under Linux?

Windoze only knows about FAT32 & NTFS so if you require Windoze compatibility that's what you need.

Alternatively you could install Cygwin on the Windoze OS to make it recognize things Linux such as ext3. That seems a lot of work though.
 
Old 07-03-2008, 04:29 PM   #3
BallsOfSteel
Member
 
Registered: Mar 2008
Location: Florida
Distribution: Fedora mainly, but I am open to others.
Posts: 273

Rep: Reputation: 34
There is a program that gives you ext3 support in Windows. I don't know where it is, but I'm sure a google search would give it to you.

Brandon
 
Old 07-03-2008, 05:01 PM   #4
syg00
LQ Veteran
 
Registered: Aug 2003
Location: Australia
Distribution: Lots ...
Posts: 21,103

Rep: Reputation: 4117Reputation: 4117Reputation: 4117Reputation: 4117Reputation: 4117Reputation: 4117Reputation: 4117Reputation: 4117Reputation: 4117Reputation: 4117Reputation: 4117
+1 for @jlightner - ntfs is the way to go.
I tried an IFS for ext3 on Windoze a couple of years back - wasn't very happy with it. Things move on - other people seem happy with what is now available. I stick to ntfs.
 
Old 07-03-2008, 05:03 PM   #5
Cuetzpallin
Member
 
Registered: Feb 2008
Location: Monterrey, MX
Distribution: Slackware since 3.4 and love it!!!
Posts: 164

Rep: Reputation: 31
Arrow

Quote:
Originally Posted by jlightner View Post
Can you explain why you don't want NTFS given that it is natively supported under Windows and supported via Samba under Linux?
or via NTFS-3G
Quote:
Originally Posted by jlightner View Post
Alternatively you could install Cygwin on the Windoze OS to make it recognize things Linux such as ext3. That seems a lot of work though.
Or in this way
 
Old 07-03-2008, 05:04 PM   #6
stress_junkie
Senior Member
 
Registered: Dec 2005
Location: Massachusetts, USA
Distribution: Ubuntu 10.04 and CentOS 5.5
Posts: 3,873

Rep: Reputation: 335Reputation: 335Reputation: 335Reputation: 335
Quote:
Originally Posted by syg00 View Post
+1 for @jlightner - ntfs is the way to go.
I tried an IFS for ext3 on Windoze a couple of years back - wasn't very happy with it. Things move on - other people seem happy with what is now available. I stick to ntfs.
I agree. The ntfs-3g driver enables full access to ntfs on Linux. I think you still need Windows to format the partition though.
 
Old 07-03-2008, 05:14 PM   #7
ErV
Senior Member
 
Registered: Mar 2007
Location: Russia
Distribution: Slackware 12.2
Posts: 1,202
Blog Entries: 3

Rep: Reputation: 62
Quote:
Originally Posted by digity View Post
So, either way I need to move away from FAT32 because of the limitations mentioned above. Will ext3 solve those issues and is reading and writing to a ext3 drive stable and reliable under Windows (just in case)? Or do I need to look at another format altogether?

P.S. - no NTFS please
There are at least two programs that support transparent usage of ext3 on WinXP, but I never used them personally and I remember people recommended to never use them. Google it, if your interested.

I think, NTFS is your only option - Windows doesn't support anything else that might be useful. Forgetting about Windows and using any other available filesystem instead (ext2, ext3, reiserfs, xfs - whatever) is also a good way to solve problem.

Also, formatting 1TB drive in Fat32 was a really bad idea, because space will be wasted. See here or search for "FAT32 cluster size".

Quote:
Originally Posted by stress_junkie View Post
I agree. The ntfs-3g driver enables full access to ntfs on Linux. I think you still need Windows to format the partition though.
There is mkntfs command.

Last edited by ErV; 07-03-2008 at 05:15 PM.
 
Old 07-03-2008, 05:43 PM   #8
syg00
LQ Veteran
 
Registered: Aug 2003
Location: Australia
Distribution: Lots ...
Posts: 21,103

Rep: Reputation: 4117Reputation: 4117Reputation: 4117Reputation: 4117Reputation: 4117Reputation: 4117Reputation: 4117Reputation: 4117Reputation: 4117Reputation: 4117Reputation: 4117
There is one major limitation of ntfs - you need Windoze to fix it. Currently only chkdsk will do the job if you have problems - not a issue for me as I need a Windows license for my work. The ntfsprogs teams are apparently looking to handle this as well in the future (hopefully without upsetting the 3g basket).

You do take regular backups ??? - I've never liked raid-0. No redundancy, and debatable performance gains - one day I might see what the disk level I/O is like on one.
 
Old 07-03-2008, 06:16 PM   #9
digity
Member
 
Registered: Apr 2005
Posts: 105

Original Poster
Rep: Reputation: 15
my bad folks, i think u read me wrong (i know i wasn't exactly clear)

i want ext3 (or some similar powerful robust Linux file system)
i don't want FAT32 anymore
i don't want NTFS because Linux does not have native support for it (i'm not a fan of using 3rd party drivers/extensions/apps like ntfs-3g on a somewhat core component of an operation)

i don't care for/require Windows friendliness anymore at this very point. i realize Linux has been very good to me supporting this relatively foreign file system (FAT32) for a year now with no problems at all. i can confidently cut that chord. i imagine Linux will shine even more with a native file system.

so... for my 2 TB (I'm buying more storage) RAID 0 (I don't care about redundancy) storage and streaming drive in my Ubuntu 8.04 (i'll upgrade from 7.10) home linux server being shared via SMB/CIFS, AFP and maybe UPnP, which file system should I go with (ext2, ext3, reiserfs, xfs or etc.)??
 
Old 07-03-2008, 06:20 PM   #10
billymayday
LQ Guru
 
Registered: Mar 2006
Location: Sydney, Australia
Distribution: Fedora, CentOS, OpenSuse, Slack, Gentoo, Debian, Arch, PCBSD
Posts: 6,678

Rep: Reputation: 122Reputation: 122
I'd suggest ext3, simply because it has the widest linux support (if you had to boot a rescue disk etc.)
 
Old 07-03-2008, 06:38 PM   #11
stress_junkie
Senior Member
 
Registered: Dec 2005
Location: Massachusetts, USA
Distribution: Ubuntu 10.04 and CentOS 5.5
Posts: 3,873

Rep: Reputation: 335Reputation: 335Reputation: 335Reputation: 335
Quote:
Originally Posted by billymayday View Post
I'd suggest ext3, simply because it has the widest linux support (if you had to boot a rescue disk etc.)
ext3 for me too. I've used several file system formats. I can't find any performance difference between the journaling file systems and ext3 is mature on Linux.
 
Old 07-05-2008, 02:28 PM   #12
digity
Member
 
Registered: Apr 2005
Posts: 105

Original Poster
Rep: Reputation: 15
so with a secondary hard drive formatted as ext3 I can still set permissions on its individual files and folders just like on the boot hard drive?

also what is the file size limit on ext3? does it have problems dealing with 6+ GB sized files?
 
Old 07-05-2008, 04:02 PM   #13
billymayday
LQ Guru
 
Registered: Mar 2006
Location: Sydney, Australia
Distribution: Fedora, CentOS, OpenSuse, Slack, Gentoo, Debian, Arch, PCBSD
Posts: 6,678

Rep: Reputation: 122Reputation: 122
Yes, and I'm according to this http://www.novell.com/documentation/...ml/apas04.html, up to 2TB, but this is for a 2.4 kernerl, so it must be at least as gret under 2.6
 
Old 07-05-2008, 06:59 PM   #14
syg00
LQ Veteran
 
Registered: Aug 2003
Location: Australia
Distribution: Lots ...
Posts: 21,103

Rep: Reputation: 4117Reputation: 4117Reputation: 4117Reputation: 4117Reputation: 4117Reputation: 4117Reputation: 4117Reputation: 4117Reputation: 4117Reputation: 4117Reputation: 4117
Better have a read of this.
 
Old 07-08-2008, 10:18 AM   #15
lurko
Member
 
Registered: Jun 2006
Location: Ontario, Canada
Distribution: Debian
Posts: 448

Rep: Reputation: 35
Consider XFS or JFS. Look at the sunit/su and swidth/sw options for mkfs.xfs. JFS will make you happy you chose it the first time you have to run fsck on your array.
 
  


Reply


Thread Tools Search this Thread
Search this Thread:

Advanced Search

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off



Similar Threads
Thread Thread Starter Forum Replies Last Post
Why use an enterprise software solution vesus a diy (home made) solution checkmate3001 Linux - Server 1 12-16-2007 02:24 PM
linux, FAT32, and /home mounting point question rshields9093 Linux - General 6 10-16-2006 07:54 AM
/home + fat32 alaios Linux - General 3 10-03-2004 09:10 PM
/home/ on fat32 fs - a good idea? mandrakemikael Linux - Newbie 4 09-03-2004 06:14 PM
home directory on FAT32 khtse Linux - General 5 05-04-2004 06:56 AM

LinuxQuestions.org > Forums > Linux Forums > Linux - General

All times are GMT -5. The time now is 04:47 AM.

Main Menu
Advertisement
My LQ
Write for LQ
LinuxQuestions.org is looking for people interested in writing Editorials, Articles, Reviews, and more. If you'd like to contribute content, let us know.
Main Menu
Syndicate
RSS1  Latest Threads
RSS1  LQ News
Twitter: @linuxquestions
Open Source Consulting | Domain Registration