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Windows Alternatives to NTFS?

Posted by Cliff on from the seeking-more-filesystem-drivers dept.

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?"

4 of 140 comments (clear)

  1. s/Slashdot/Google "AskSlashdot" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Troll

    When did Ask Slashdot become a haven for those too stupid to use google?

  2. Give me a break... by nuggetman · · Score: 0, Troll

    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.
    1. Re:Give me a break... by shaitand · · Score: 0, Troll

      Yeah but the poster does need to look again. NTFS write support is no longer marked as experimental in the 2.6 kernel, and it's actually worked quite well for some time before that.

  3. Re:Why doesn't somebody write one? by kabocox · · Score: 0, Troll

    Why aren't there win32 branches of open source file system drivers?

    Oh, that's easy. It would improve Windows. We can't have open source code used to improve Windows. Why? Because that is just religiously wrong.

    Really you have something there, but on /. you won't hear anything postive about writing open source drivers to improve any MS product. You'll hear complaints that MS should do all that work to fix their OS for free.