Re: Best File System for Cross-Platform backup

On Wed,24.Dec.08, 23:47:41, Amit Uttamchandani wrote:

I got an external hard drive to do some backup and it was formatted as
FAT32, which is a logical choice. But I thought why should I use FAT32.
I have a Debian Testing and a Mac Machine. I could use a more advanced
file system that has journalling, etc.

Fat32 has other limitations which can create problems:

- max file size of 2GB
- no support for file ownership at all
- different case in filenames (this is supported on Linux, but can
create BIG problems on Windows)

Fat32 is generally unsuitable for backup (unless you back everything up
in tarballs smaller than 2GB), but can be used for music and photos (and
small movies).

If you use ext2 (there is no implementation that supports journaling
under Windows, so an ext3 partition will be used as ext2) beware that
all drivers I tried were completely ignoring the Linux file ownership,
but at least you don't have the 2GB limitation.

I don't know about Macs, but NTFS might also be an option with ntfs-3g.

Regards,
Andrei
--
If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.
(Albert Einstein)

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