I'm replacing my dying hard drive with a 128 GB SSD and a 500 GB HDD. The SSD is where the operating systems will live. I will have several versions of linux, and would also like to try a *BSD for learning on. FreeBSD, Dragonfly and PC-BSD all sound interesting.

The 500 GB platter hard drive will have two partitions: a small one for /var and a large one for /data.

/data is where I keep my work, documents and photos instead of in /home. This way I can access it from any distro and don't have to worry about conflicting configuration files. /data will have two directories in it: /tigerflag (my personal directory) and /music

I would like to read and write to /data from *BSD, but it appears that ext2 is the only Linux filesystem that *BSD can write to. I've heard that ext2 can be a real mess if there's a system crash. Is ext2 the only filesystem that will work for both linux and BSD?

Is the risk of data loss with ext2 bad enough that I should forget about installing *BSD? (Or in this forum, do you think I should install the *BSD and forget about Linux?)

Also, any advice for partitioning a drive to multi-boot several linux distros and *BSD?

One factor that holds me back from going straight *BSD is that I plan to upgrade to an AMD Trinity APU processor, and none of the *BSDs support it yet.

Your advice is sincerely appreciated!

If you want a filesystem with read/write support for both Linux and *BSD then I'd look at using XFS as it is journaled (unlike ext2) and is supported in both operating systems.

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Can I jump in on this topic? Other than the filesystem type, which partitioning strategy is best to share any Linux distro with, say, Netbsd? Links are fine too. Thanks

Also writable under FreeBSD? I found this documentation.

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If ext2 is the only mutually R/W filesystem for linux and *BSD, then I'll skip installing a *BSD. I want a journaled (sp?) filesystem for my data.

Thanks, guys.

One option you might consider is running a very light *BSD in a virtual machine. You could then export your Linux filesystem (ext3, ext4, xfs, jfs) to the BSD guest via NFS, allowing you to read and write to/from it. You could even assign the data disk entirely to the BSD guest, and export it back to the Linux host via NFS, using the BSD guest as your NFS server. That way you could have, for example, a FreeBSD ZFS filesystem for your data.

This sounds really intriguing, but I'm afraid it's way over my head. I don't know what a virtual machine or NFS is. I barely even know command line or how to get around in the shell.

You ought to take a moment to learn about a free virtual machine. A virtual machine is a software version of a real computer. For example, you can boot up to your host OS. Then start the vm application. That vm can create and run almost an unlimited number of OS's. Each run generally in the host's os's filesystem.

See vmplayer, virtualbox or qemu/kvm data.

Yes it is writeable.

No XFS is not writeable under FreeBSD. Moreso it is not stable, it is bitrotting, and is slated for removal in -current as the project works towards having all the filesystems free of the biglock.

If you want to share info between linux and *BSD, use either fat32, udf, or ext2.

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I was under the impression that is was. It was in use in my last workplace and I thought it was writeable. I may have been in error, if so my apologies.

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Apologies for not thanking you sooner- I was offline for several days. This is very helpful and much appreciated.