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Windows Alternatives to NTFS?
Maidjeurtam asks: "I'm a multi-OS user. Although Linux is what I use the most these days (I run it on my primary P4 box and on my iBook), I also run Mac OS X and a Windows XP on other machines. Of course, those boxes are networked, but sometimes, I just prefer to plug one machine's hard disk into another. I often work with big DV files (> 4GiB) and it looks like I have no other choice than having a different filesystem on each of my boxes. Granted, Linux can read NTFS (Macs can too) and even write to NTFS partitions thanks to tools like Captive, but I don't like the idea of running Windows code on my Linux box. In fact, I don't want my data stored on a proprietary, closed filesystem. I've googled a bit and it seems there's no modern (free-as-in-speech) filesystem I can install on Windows. I'd love to have ReiserFS running on my XP box, for example. Am I condemned to stay with NTFS, or do you guys know of a Windows-compatible, open filesystem that I can use?"
It's not "open" but it's well-known and a bit of a defacto standard.
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
FAT32
Last I checked, you couldn't have files over 4 gb in size on a FAT partition.
When did Ask Slashdot become a haven for those too stupid to use google?
What we did for file systems was standardize on ISO9660 throughout, though we are considering a move to UFS so we have support for larger files. Windows supports it, though you have to hack the registry to get write access enabled, and we ended up writing a custom "disk format" tool to actually get disks initialised because, needless to say, W2K doesn't actually allow you to format disks as ISO9660 by default.
Well recommended. There are some neat features of ISO9660, like the VAX/VMS style "versions" for instance. Unfortunately, bog standard ISO9660 has crappy 32.3 style filenames (and for maximum compatability we're encouraged to just do 8.3), so it's not a perfect solution (another reason we want to switch to UFS.)
Definitely recommended though. It's a little slow, but everything will read it.
Oke... but FAT32 sucks.. its slow.. its propetary and MS just recommends everyone to upgrade to NTFS..
http://www.daniweb.com/techtalkforums/showthread.p hp?t=693
/* oops I accidentally made a comment, sorry */
looks like it may be alittle old, but it may work
Reiserfs under windows
but I don't like the idea of running Windows code on my Linux box
How does plugging the drive in mean reading Windows code? If you're refering to the ntfs.sys file used by Captive, then just don't use captive and live with not writing NTFS.
In fact, I don't want my data stored on a proprietary, closed filesystem
In fact, what the hell does it matter? Seriously. Nobody wants to steal your DV files unless you work for Pixar, so you don't need to uber encrypt them 300 times over using PGP, GPG, PPG, GGP, GNUPG, PGGNU, and GPGNU. Accessibility is hardly an issue - you can find an XP or 2000 install CD almost anywhere online, or even bring it to a friends house and hook it in to his box. Not to mention you stated Linux and OS X can read NTFS. You're never going to have a problem w/ getting at your data stored on an NTFS partition.
I hate people who complain about things just because they're proprietary. Nobody is forcing you to use NTFS either, Win XP supports FAT 32 file systems and so do Linux and Mac.
...and that's all there is to it.
I was actually thinking about this a few days ago. There's lots of work out there getting linux to run windows drivers, but I haven't seen much work on writing windows drivers for posix (*nix, whatever) stuff.
A while ago I downloaded the Windows DDK from Microsoft for something, but I didn't end up using it, uninstalled it and now I can't find the download. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem avail. for free from Microsoft's site anymore either (Microsoft WHDC DDK page). I have work to do, but this page seems like it might be of some help: OSROnline.com... maybe.
Anyways, the idea still stands, why aren't there win32 branches of open source file system drivers? Of course, I know squat about writing drivers, especially filesystem drivers, so there may be a damn good reason why not. But figured I'd throw it out anywho.
DONT PANIC
when i have questions...have you ever tried google?
. htm#ext2fsd">http://www.tuningsoft.com/projects/pr ojects.htm#ext2fsd</a>
<a href="http://www.tuningsoft.com/projects/projects
but I don't like the idea of running Windows code on my Linux box. In fact, I don't want my data stored on a proprietary, closed filesystem.
And this is why you will die very lonely.
Seriously though, what does it matter? You want files over 4 gig in Windows? You pretty much have to use NTFS. Deal with it.
Not All Who Wander Are Lost
Currently ext2 might be an alternative. There are two open source drivers, both quite buggy. There is also a commercial solution, which produces strange things. It worked for a while, then writing under (2k) makes double double sized - so it becomes full pretty quickly, unless you switch back and forth to do an fsck (which will repair, I mean correct the size without data damage).
It is a pity there is little interest in writing a good ext2 driver for windows - I think some of us would make good use of it, for good (and fast) data storage.
BTW, I don't use the commercial solution, its on my friends puter, and as I said, it worked fine for a while - and we don't know what caused it to register double sizes for data. It might be a windows thing, otherwise it worked perfectly (read-write). Name for commercial driver is Paragon ext2fs anywhere, or something like that (try google).
In fact, I don't want my data stored on a proprietary, closed filesystem.
Hmm, then maybe don't use Windows?! Seriously, why complain about the file system in particular when the entire OS is closed source. It's one thing to say "I only use OSS," but it's another to say "I don't mind closed source software, except for on this one part - there it's bad."
Windows is optimized for NTFS now, and NTFS is good. If you don't want propritary stuff, don't use Windows, period.
Explore ex2fs
I'd love to have ReiserFS running on my XP box, for example.
Reiser is not really appropriate here, because you want a filesystem for "large" files. Reiser's strength and efficiency is in large numbers of small files.
/^([Ss]ame [Bb]at (time, |channel.)){2}$/
- Am I condemned to stay with NTFS?
Yes, as long as you want stability and consistenty (as in error recovery, such as provided by metadata journaling), you are.Windows supports FAT32 and ISO9660 out of the box. FAT32 does not provide enough error recovery to be recommendable. People using ISO9660 as a hard-drive file system are crazy masochists -- enough said. There are seemingly abandoned ports of Ext2 and ReiserFS out there. None of them are in any sense stable for production use.
Why aren't there more file systems available on Windows? The first clue is that Windows is not an open-source platform; open-source hackers tend to live on open-source platforms. The people who work on kernel-level development under Windows are likely to be pursuing commercial software from the outset.
Furthermore, Windows kernel development is something of a black art; it is hard enough that you need to have some vested interest in the platform in order to stay; you would want to live and breathe Windows kernel APIs. (APIs, incidentally, that don't seem constructed for use by humans; for example, due to the limited size of the kernel addressing space, there are several different "kinds" of memory you must carefully allocate and manage yourself. Add to this the awkwardness involved in debugging this stuff, the poor kernel-level development tools offered by Microsoft, the limited documentation, the fact that much third-party information is non-gratis, and of course that the kernel sources themselves are closed, and you have one painful hobby.) In short, you would want to become a kernel specialist.
These painfully-accrued skills are worth their weight in gold, and used to leverage careers as highly-paid consultants or highly-paid trainers, or both. And some, of course, are driver writers for hardware companies.
There's a further reason: Linux file system drivers, in my experience, are designed to be, well, Linux file system drivers. Witness the amount of effort taken by IBM and SGI to port their proprietary journaling file systems to Linux -- and this was from one Unix-like kernel to another. Windows' internal file-system driver API is completely different from Linux'. Porting one file system not only requires a lot of knowledge about the different kernel APIs, but also about the file system itself, because most likely the file-system code is not cleanly separated from the kernel-specific code; you can't just sit down and write an adapter layer. (This is actually mostly speculation, but based on casual perusal of some existing driver code.)
There will be viable, open-source file systems on Windows the day somebody takes the time and effort do implement (and maintain) one. As for myself, I bought the book and started; I gave up not because it was technically challenging, but because it was no fun, and there were more interesting knowledge out there that I wanted to store in my brain.
Really, the issue is getting Windows to mount a drive which is not FAT/FAT32/ISO9660/NTFS. In order for an OS to mount a filesystem, there must be logic coded into the OS which will allow it to parse the file allocation tables and other information (journaling, etc.) and read and write files from/to the disk in that format. To the best of my knowledge, Microsoft has never supported any FS other than its own for HDD usage.
Fortunately for you, MS does have a filesystem-abstraction mechanism known as SMB, which several projects (most notably the SAMBA project) have implemented. These systems communicate with Windows via SMB, presenting information to the OS with parameters it understands. By proxy, then, the MS OS doesn't care a whit about what back end FS it's writing to - as far as it's concerned, it's just like any other MS OS via the network.
So probably the best solution is to have a network-mounted drive connected via a high-speed link (gigabit ethernet, etc.) on a linux box running SMB. If you do it right, you should hopefully have enough bandwidth to do your video and have it hosted wherever you like.
Good luck!
May work!!
/etc/nsswitch.conf
Its read-only, command-line access!
You type commands like this:
extdump \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE1 -o 68b3cb000
If you want to read a file.
Sam
blog.sam.liddicott.com
I don't think it is available now, but I think it would be a very useful thing to have this option available, even as a horrible hack.
On the side, I've been trying to round up information on what it takes to do this, but it sure has been a pain.
I'm not really sure why Microsoft it so tight-lipped about the IfsKit and the DDK, but my best guess is that they don't want the kind of support issues that would come with too many different kinds of file systems. I suppose they're thinking that if they make the barrier to entry sufficiently high, the only takers will be professional enough to provide a decent level of support so Microsoft doesn't have to.
For the vast majority of their customers, that is probably the right decision. But for the geeks (like me) who want to do crazy things with their computers, it sure is frustrating.
I actually work for Microsoft, so the good news is that I have access to the info. The bad news is that I probably can't open-source anything that I make with it, and that even if I could, it wouldn't be of any value (you'd have to have the IfsKit to build it...). But I'm looking into my options. My ideal would be to produce a usable interface for pluggable user-mode file systems. Performance wouldn't be great, but I think it would still be very useful. I'm pretty sure that I could release a free version (binary-only) of something would make at least a few geeks happy.
The plan is as follows: a driver provides a \\.\UMFS kernel namespace object that redirects IO requests to a user-mode service. The service has a set of registered plugins. A request for "\\.\UMFS\ReiserFS\Vol1\Hello.txt" would load the "ReiserFS" plugin and request "/Vol1/Hello.txt".
Once that is done, the rest is pretty easy. "Junctions" would allow you to make mount points into any desired branch of the UMFS tree, and the user-mode plugin interface would hopefully be reasonably simple. There could potentially be kernel-mode plugins as well, but that would be pretty far down the list of priorities.
The coolest part wouldn't be mounting ReiserFS, though. I think it would be much more interesting to implement filesystem access to other system resources -- WMI, Registry, Process/Thread table, etc.
Lot'sa other issues to worry about -- security, caching, etc. Not quite trivial. But it should be possible. Anyway, we'll see if I ever get time to implement it...
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
How about a Samba share? On either the 'nix or the XP box - or even on a 3rd file server of some sort? Or you could use SCP or SFTP.
Granted, I realize then you're copying stuff back and forth. But it seems to be the least buggy, most reliable solution.
Actually, the limitation I'm concerned about is FILE SIZE. Partition size is a different story. While Windows would cap FAT partitions at 2 GB for the first partition and 4 GB for the next 3 in Win95 and Win98 (not sure which editions), newer versions of FAT WILL CREATE 32GB PARTITIONS!
However, using Linux, I have created, and STILL USE a 62 GB FAT32 partition. I use it both in Linux and Windows with no problems. Windows can mount a much larger FAT filesystem than it will create.
This is not conjecture - this is my primary machine (running XP and Mandrake 9.1) and I'm typing from it now.
why ru using winxp at all?
I do exactly the same thing, and eventually I decided the smartest way would be to use a networked filesystem. I have my DV box with mirrored (essential in my mind) 120GB drives running Debian and sharing via NFS over a 100Mb network. You could use any operating system on that box and it wouldn't matter.
I can rip DV footage to it with no lost frames and no problems. I also do a lot of audio recording, and can record at least 12 simultaneous tracks to it.
I can access it from any computer, it's never down, I don't have to restart to get into my files, everything just works!
Bo Branten knows his Windows IFS interface. About halfway down his projects page are a couple of links to ext2-ifs projects. Don't know if any are stable enough to use for everyday work, but it's worth a shot!
Bo Branten's Projects Page
UDF is the Universal Disk Format. Although generally used for DVD+-RW disks, it can be used for harddisks too. All the modern operating systems support it, including Microsoft Windows (apparently since win95b).
Random Article link.
This is what I do.
Linux: The world's best text-adventure game.
You might have just hit it.
The issue with wanting everthing OSS on windows is that it makes migration easier. Almost every company has 1 or 2 apps that have to be on windows...so the key is replacing one-at-a-time...mozilla here, openoffice.org there... It's a page right out of the MS playbook...cooperate with everything and quietly switch user bases. But with OSS you won't ever be FORCED to switch and pay more money!!!
there's a commercial, and I believe, several free versions of "ext2fs for windows" you might wish to google for that. You would be able to share your ext2fs file system with your linux install. However, they aren't "install" options. Only fat32 fat16 and ntfs qualify as "install" options on windows operating systems, and I doubt there is a bare-metal recovery kit in existance that would allow you to "backup ntfs install", reformat to ext2fs, "restore from bare metal onto ext2fs" and voila, without blue screens galore.
When the XP service pack betas were leaked, people were making "streamlined" versions of XP to install. I know at first they would put everything together on a network and people would install over the lan, but at one point a tutorial how to make a booting streamlined cd came out, before dell or anyone was releasing SP1 CDs with computers or retail. My theory/question: If the Microsoft guy(or anyone for that matter) would make Windows happily use ext2, plugin system or driver or whatever, couldn't you just again, alter the boot script of the install CD to load the ext2 driver and boot from it, then install XP on it? If you have a FAT system, since XP recognizes it, it will let you install on it. If it recognized ext2, wouldn't XP just let you install on the partition? Just a thought...and please people, go easy on me...I know I'm not genius and this is a lot harder to do than suggest, I'm just tryina keep the creative juices flowin'!
But write support is no longer marked experimental in the 2.6 kernel.
For good reason I'd say, I've been using NTFS write support for the past several revisions without a single hiccup.
First I was cautious and ginger in my handling of NTFS writes, and then more bold. Now I don't consider corruption anymore than I would with windows. I guess that comes from hundreds if not thousands of writes without a single issue *shrugs*.
In any case, if the kernel maintainers think it's safe to take off the experimental tag, and I've used it without any problems. Maybe it'll go well for you too.
NTFS write used to be horrid, and required external cleanup utils just to use. That's long long gone, if you've been afraid to touch it because of being burned in the past, seriously, it's time to try again.
Get a jumbo-frame capable gigabit switch and NICs on each computer (preferably intel or syskonnect). NFS or SMB with 8kB frames screams!
You might want to put extra RAM and RAID10 the disks (or just RAID0) on the file server.
Though this only works if the hosts are within a networkable range.
How about installing a NFS client on your windows workstation and make yourself a NFS file server with a linux 2.6.x kernel?
Gigabit ethernet card are cheap these days and you can get yourself a nice SATA raid that will be able to handle your huge DV files.
Seb
Granted they won't allow you to just switch harddisks, but a fileserver is not that expensive (just a cheap pc, with a somewhat big powersupply, a few promise cards for extra ide and 8 or so 200 GB disks should be less than $2000)
You can stream to that over a standard network with peak rates that approach line speed (100 mbit) and I get sustained 90 mbit rates every day (just don't overload those disks, as they are ide disks, not meant for constant use)
Fileservers are good. See one here (good, not great) or just build yourself a cheap box and put massive storage in it, and attach it to your 100Mb network.
I think Hans Reiser submitted some information to that effect, saying that Reiser FS is superior to NTFS but the bundling of the OS to the filesystem locked them out of fair competition. Interesting.
I want a good common filesystem, and not just for Windows. I want a filesystem that Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, OSX and Windows can read/write. The "good" criteria eliminates FAT32. UFS is free, open, tried and true. So why is it only available readonly in Linux?
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
noatime and no 8.3 file name generation is off in reg for NTFS so it already has a benefit there. Originally the disk was a replacement disk (7200RPM laptop drive vs 5400). I was looking at perf figures before I installed it as a system disk with the FAT32 and NTFS fs's in the sam loc during after reformatting the same partition.
.5X by the end of the disk.
.4 as fast as FAT32, USB2.0 was topping out at ~.6 of the speed on FAT32, but about .5 the speed when using NTFS and that's where NTFS was slowest.
I'm aware of the outer sectors reading slowly -- I see it painfully obviously where on a clean disk a "dd" (I have linux on the sys too, dual boot) will start at rate X and almost be down to
I was running tests over USB2.0, Firewire and as an "extra" internal HD. Firewire and internal IDE HD w/NTFS were about
Now, I get some of the bene's I need for username security by using a small NTFS partition (basically to install their unix extensions on to play w/), while getting perf bene's for files that don't need separate username management.
Most of my files don't need username management because it is a _laptop_. You still need a username/pw to log into the computer. The fs isn't exported (2-way 3rd party fw, default block).
For a _personal_ computer, I haven't found the overhead of NTFS (and problems easily reading/writing it from Linux). Like the original poster, I'd like rely on something other than windows code to have r/w access to my files. Theoretically, doesn't matter if you can use the virtualized Windows driver for r/w access -- you still need to have bought an authorized copy of Windows to run the driver on your machine. No?
-l
Several years ago I used a slackware 7 box with KDE (and konqueror and K-manage) to administrate and provide DHCP and mail services for an NT network, another *x alpha box was the file and app server (radius, webtrends, etc) All of the NT boxes had their native partitions and the OS and native apps mounted on NTFS. The whole rest of the network was EXT2FS and it was flawless under samba 2. I haven't built a trick *x box in a few years but if they have a journaled file system now I'm ready to build a new one :)
Emancipate yourself from mental slavery, none but ourselves can free our minds. Robert Nesta Marley