Please recommend a Linux file system type?

[Linflas]

For use on a 120GB USB hard drive. I need to be able to store files as large as 10-12GB in size. I will be using this drive to hold images to use with Novell Zen Imaging which is small SuSE based boot cd. I have been keeping my images on a hidden windows share on a Windows workstation and mounting it cifs when I want to create/restore an image but would like to use the USB HD as a way to keep the traffic off the network when possible. I know I can just use NTFS and mount it to read the images but I want to also be able to write images to it as well which is not recommended with NTFS directly as I understand things.

Edit I realize I probably should have more correctly asked for a file system type to be used for this. Changed it in the thread title.

 

[Nothinman]

Writing to NTFS via NTFS-3g is painful at best, I tried saving an image via ntfsclone to an NTFS volume and the transfer rate was easily 1/10th of what it was after I reformatted the volume with a native Linux filesystem.

I'm a fan of XFS, been using it since it was released for Linux back in like 2001 or whenever. Supposedly XFS has better handling of large files, but I can't say I've really noticed since I don't do A/V work. The downside is that there's no chance of reading it in anything besides Linux and maybe FreeBSD. If you use ext* there's a few Windows tools to read the filesystem in ext2 mode. Using ext3 or ext4 would be the "safer" option in that respect.

 

[Linflas]

Thanks, after reading up I am going to give ext4 a try, sounds easiest to do as long as it will mount with the version of SuSE Novell uses for the imaging CD.

 

[Nothinman]

Thanks, after reading up I am going to give ext4 a try, sounds easiest to do as long as it will mount with the version of SuSE Novell uses for the imaging CD.

If you can get to a command-line you can type 'cat /proc/filesystems' to see what it currently supports and 'uname -a' will tell you the kernel version.

 

[Linflas]

If you can get to a command-line you can type 'cat /proc/filesystems' to see what it currently supports and 'uname -a' will tell you the kernel version.

Thanks. This turned out to be very useful. Turns out it does not support ext4 or ext3. Time for more research.

Ended up using ext2. It has the added advantage of being usable with my XP box using EXT2FSD as well.

 

[Nothinman]

Thanks. This turned out to be very useful. Turns out it does not support ext4 or ext3. Time for more research.

Ended up using ext2. It has the added advantage of being usable with my XP box using EXT2FSD as well.

Just watch out because ext2 isn't journaled so there's a greater chance for filesystem issues if you pull the drive without unmounting it properly, power flicker, etc. I'd be leery of using it for a filesystem of any decent size unless you plan on keeping copies of the data elsewhere just in case. What kernel does it use? Are perhaps ext3, ext4, etc available as modules but just not loaded?

 

[Linflas]

Just watch out because ext2 isn't journaled so there's a greater chance for filesystem issues if you pull the drive without unmounting it properly, power flicker, etc. I'd be leery of using it for a filesystem of any decent size unless you plan on keeping copies of the data elsewhere just in case. What kernel does it use? Are perhaps ext3, ext4, etc available as modules but just not loaded?

The only thing that won't be backed up on the drive is when I write an image to it and that is only as long as it takes to do that and connect it to my workstation to copy over the image file. In order to make changes to the OS itself I have to setup a SuSE box, copy over the initrd and go through a long process to extract and mount it, make changes to it, and reverse the process. I have done it a couple of times when I absolutely had no choice to add a network driver.

 

[Scarpozzi]

SuSE used to use Reiser as its default filesystem and Red Hat used EXT2 for RH3, EXT3 for RH4/5. I haven't kept up with SuSE in the past couple of years, but remember hearing that someone bought rights to Reiser (possibly Red Hat) and they were moving to EXT3 as the default (probably 5 or so years ago).

If you want a journaling file system that MAY be compatible with Zen, check out Reiser. You can also go to the novell support forums and post this question. There are quite a few experts out there that will know what the application will support...if you can't find the documentation for your version.

 

[Nothinman]

Avoid Reiserfs and Reiser4 at all costs. Reiserfs is pretty much abandoned and was pretty much single-threaded because no one cared to make the locking more granular. And last I checked Reiser4 was experimental at best.

 

[Khyron320]

And Hans Reiser is in jail for murdering his wife

 

[Nothinman]

And Hans Reiser is in jail for murdering his wife

In theory that shouldn't matter since it's all GPL'd code, but in this case it does because no one but him and his employees seem to care about Reiserfs so the absolute minimum work is done to keep them working as the kernel evolves.