How should I format my new WD portable hard drive?

Pen guin · 12-17-2021, 09:54 AM

I suppose I technically have a dual boot system. A/Windows on an SSD, and B/ Linux Mint is on an NVMe drive.

As the title suggests, I just bought a new 1TB WD Portable Hard Drive to store my Linux Backups.

My question is, should I reformat the drive, or use it "as is?"

Thanks.

Pen guin

michaelk · 12-17-2021, 10:24 AM

It depends on how you create your backups. Many backup applications require a linux filesystem if using rsync with snapshots.

If you want to also use it with Windows then you need NTFS.

You can compromise and split the drive to use as a linux drive but also use it with Windows.

BenCollver · 12-17-2021, 10:31 AM

Another option besides ntfs is exfat.

enigma9o7 · 12-17-2021, 10:37 AM

<fail>

frankbell · 12-17-2021, 08:28 PM

Based my experience, I think you are safe leaving it as is.

I generally leave external USB drives as they came (usually NTFS). I have had no issues using rsync -a to run backups to those partitions, but, as a home user, I do the backups manually when called for (that is, when I've made some sort of major change), not automatically.

enigma9o7 · 12-17-2021, 08:34 PM

He's never mentioned what it is currently so kinda impossible to answer if "as is" is ok. In my experience when a drive is preformatted its always been FAT32... but unless you're intending to use it for something that doesn't support ext4 or exfat or ntfs, its usually a good idea to reformat to whichever of those your devices do support to avoid a couple limitations of fat32 ...

michaelk · 12-17-2021, 08:53 PM

I have always found that portable drives are usually pre-formatted as NTFS.