Hello all,

I am thinking about changing my home server from windows server to a linux server...

I currently use the windows server for most of my file storage. What i want to know is what filesystem to set my hdd partition to, to ensure it can be read and written to, from both linux and windows (as i still use windows for my desktop)...and i know that ntfs support on linux is not great...as you cannot write to it.

I was thinking fat32, is this a good choice, or is it a slow filesystem. Im quite stuck, lol

Thanks, Justin

If you're sharing it over the network, it doesn't matter because the data will be changed to bits and bytes and sent over the network anyway.

Now, if you're working with large multimedia files (like DVD's or MythTV videos that are several Gigabytes large) you'll want a filesystem like xfs that handles large files well. Otherwise, ext3 is usually fine...

Ok, so i can store windows files and such on the linux box, regardless of the share, and i use samba for windows networking..is that correct?

at this point in time, i prob wont have large files on there, but if i really start to get the hang and like linux, then theres a change it could, so should i format my storage partition to xfs, even tho im not using large files yet, if at all? Im using opensuse 10.2.

Thanks for the help.

Justin

Yes, if you've got the files shared with samba, then any other machine that supports Windows networking can read and write the files just like normal. The data is, as earlier stated, broken down into bits and bytes and the computer is what actually writes it to the disc, so it doesn't matter that your windows machines don't support ext3, it's your server that will actually be writing it to the disc. Ext3 should suit your needs just fine, it's what I use on all my computers. I've never had an issue with file size issues even with files larger than 4 GB. (DVD .iso images)

It's more an issue of speed with large files. I can delete a 4GB file in about 2 seconds on an xfs partition. When I used ext3 for large files, it took what seemed like an eternity to delete the same 4GB file...

is xfs supported by opensuse 10.2? also, is xfs quicker the ext3 when working with smaller files.

what if the filesize is not much bigger than 1 gig, is ext3 fine for that?

i think i might stick with ext3, but the knowledge never hurts :P

thanks for clearing that up.

Cheers, Justin

I learned something today, :-) Thanks for the info. On the topic of file systems, what about ReiserFS? I tried it once and it seemed to run dog slow on a machine that got up and ran with the same OS using ext3. Are there advantages to it?

@dudeman:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_file_systems
http://www.debian-administration.org/articles/388