Recommended file system for a storage hard drive?

[N11]

What is the recommended, most efficient file system to use on a storage disk that is going to be accessed by various operating system both *nix and microsoft windows? Partition to be approximately 20GB in size.

 

[Sunner]

Windows - NTFS
Linux - Ext3 since it's well supported, and more than capable enough.
*BSD - The default for your BSD of choice(FFS for OpenBSD, etc).

 

[N11]

But which efficient file system for a single storage device to be accessed by various OS'? My incline was ext3 but I wasn't sure if windows would be capable of reading/writing to it.

 

[Sunner]

Originally posted by: N11
But which efficient file system for a single storage device to be accessed by various OS'? My incline was ext3 but I wasn't sure if windows would be capable of reading/writing to it.

Aha, I see what you mean now, dual boot style?, I kinda misread it and thought you meant network access.
Well, for starters Windows can't read jack except for MS's own filesystems, so that rules out all *NIX/Linux filesystems.
FAT32 would be your best bet, Linux has pretty good write support, I've used it quite a bit and never had problems, but still, I wouldn't bet my life on it, I doubt MS handed the Linux developers any docs, so it's at your own risk, and all that.

 

[Need4Speed]

is this a dual boot or is it going to be network storage? If its network storage then ext3 will work since samba will do the filesystem translation

 

[N11]

Originally posted by: Sunner

Originally posted by: N11
But which efficient file system for a single storage device to be accessed by various OS'? My incline was ext3 but I wasn't sure if windows would be capable of reading/writing to it.

Aha, I see what you mean now, dual boot style?, I kinda misread it and thought you meant network access.
Well, for starters Windows can't read jack except for MS's own filesystems, so that rules out all *NIX/Linux filesystems.
FAT32 would be your best bet, Linux has pretty good write support, I've used it quite a bit and never had problems, but still, I wouldn't bet my life on it, I doubt MS handed the Linux developers any docs, so it's at your own risk, and all that.

Yes this is dual/triple boot. Thanks for the info.

-N11

 

[igiveup]

If its a multi boot platform then Ext3 won't work for you since windows will not be able to access the disk. As far as I can tell you aren't talking about another server. If you are then Need4Speed's suggestion works well (I use Samba).

FAT 16 or 32 for a dual/triple boot system. Take your pick.

 

[mjquilly]

Originally posted by: igiveup
If its a multi boot platform then Ext3 won't work for you since windows will not be able to access the disk. As far as I can tell you aren't talking about another server. If you are then Need4Speed's suggestion works well (I use Samba).

FAT 16 or 32 for a dual/triple boot system. Take your pick.

Doesn't FAT16 limit partition size to 2 Gig?

 

[Sunner]

Originally posted by: mjquilly

Originally posted by: igiveup
If its a multi boot platform then Ext3 won't work for you since windows will not be able to access the disk. As far as I can tell you aren't talking about another server. If you are then Need4Speed's suggestion works well (I use Samba).

FAT 16 or 32 for a dual/triple boot system. Take your pick.

Doesn't FAT16 limit partition size to 2 Gig?

No that's 4 GB, under Win9x you're limited to 2GB but under WinNT 4 or 5.x you can go up to 4 GB.

 

[N11]

So the Windows operating system including 2000 will not read any non-MS file system? Not even reiser?

 

[Nothinman]

So the Windows operating system including 2000 will not read any non-MS file system? Not even reiser?

Nope. When you dualboot you limit yourself to pretty much FAT. There were some beta quality ext2 filesystem drivers for Windows, but I wouldn't trust them.