Hi all,

I have just purchased a 1 TB external hard disk to be used for backups. The backups will be performed with rsync and since I don't really care about accessing the data from other operating systems, I think I'll use ext3 on the partition. I'll just be backing up my home directory and probably /etc as well. In my home directory, I have a small number of files that are several GB, but most are tens of MB in size or less.

I'm just wondering if there are any special options I should pass when I create the filesystem with mkfs.ext3.

Thanks.

With using mkfs.ext3, you shouldn't need anything special.

To add to that, I normally format my external drives with ext4. Just my personal preference.

Josh

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I used XFS in exactly the same situation simply because I hate the long mkfs process for ext3. XFS is (according to the documentation) a filesystem suitable for huge disks. XFS has performed perfectly, both on internal and external hard disks.

Having said that, XFS is quite old, ancient not to say. I haven't seen disadvantages in various documentations, but still there seemed the need for many successors, like Reiser, etx3 and now ext4. XFS is journalling as well of course.

jlinkels

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On one hand I'd almost say to consider -m option but I have never used it so ...

1 members found this post helpful.

I never used it either, but it does remind me about a hard drive I have upstairs... I just might experiment now.

Thanks to everyone for their responses so far.

Hmm, I assume it's going to take ages to create a 1 TB ext3 filesystem. However, since it only has to be done once, maybe it's not much of an issue . Are there any other advantages of XFS, then, or would you recommend sticking with ext3/4?


Interesting. I suppose it can't hurt and avoiding fragmentation seems like a good thing..

I decided to stick with ext3. It didn't take very long to create the filesystem. Thanks again to everyone.