Best Filesystem for an 8TB External Drive
 

Just got a nice new 8TB external USB drive, and t has an NTFS file system.

I never use any other OS, I will never use Windows or a Mac, and I won't ever connect this drive to a TV to play movies and so on.

So what FS should I use.

DuckDuckGoing seems to bring back answers that say EXT3 is a good choice. I tried that once on 1TB drive and copying to it was really slow. Never found out why.

Suggestions please and why.

ext4 is a good all around filesystem. Backwards compatible with ext3/2 and any Linux will mount it fine.
If you plan on using it for large media files may want to use XFS, but ext4 is almost as good with large media files.

I'd just use ExFAT. Fast (certainly moreso than an NTFS drive mounted on Linux!), and I'm comfortable not having journaling on a drive full of stuff that's just nice to have.

Looking to start another flame-fest ? ... ;)
ext3 is history - ext4 was designed to overcome its shortcomings on big filesystems. I don't have anything that big, but I use ext4 as my go-to. Also has much faster fsck.
USB connected drives have exposed some issues in memory management - large transfers to USB slowing down over time and/or interfering with the rest of the system. Should all be a thing of the past, but will apply to all filesystems probably. Kernel version and I/O scheduler will also have an impact.
Nothing is ever as simple as it first seems.

I'd look to Phronix for tests on different filesystems at your kernel level and type of files.

Also important may be tools. Ext4 may have the most.

Advanced features might look to Btrfs/ZFS.

I would use ext4. :)

Or leave it like it is. Linux and Microsoft will read/write to a ntfs volume just fine. See man ntfs-3g
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ntfs

16TB file size, max files 4.3G

It is proprietary but works fine. Read/write speed is fine.
If you want to stick it into a windows machine some day, or a bluray player, it'll work. Another words about everything can use it. It is a USB drive. You may want to stick it into something else other than Linux some day.

It is obnoxious in the volume being corrupted if you don't let it unmount cleanly.

I'd look at XFS with copy-on-write activated or even better try ZFS. I'd really avoid FAT and NTFS, as they are awful especially in the context of a non-Windows environment.

Copy-on-write would be set in XFS using the crc and reflink options when formatting. That will make the file system more resiliant in regards to sudden removal or power loss.

ZFS also has copy-on-write, plus many more advantages. It can be set to work with a single device and tuned to use far less RAM than its reputation implies.

I'd stay away from ExFAT, have had a fair share of problems with that.

Just use EXT4 :thumbsup:

If you have multiple partitions you can use different file systems on different partitions. :)

ext4 is good for pretty much anything/everything though.

Have you chosen your backup procedures yet?

Considering how many people use, and rely upon, and work with ext4 right now I'd say it's the obvious choice. There may be faster file systems but I have yet to see any big downsides to ext4 be published.

Reiser4 Killer file system for large storage Umm. I mean works real good ;-)

Hehehe, should not laugh but "killer FS", well...