Cross-OS File System That Sucks Less?

An anonymous reader writes "I recently got an external hard disk with USB 2.0/Firewire/Firewire 800/eSATA to be used for backup and file exchange — my desktop runs Linux (with a Windows partition for games but no data worth saving), and the laptop is a MacBook Pro. So the question popped up: what kind of filesystem is best for this kind of situation? Is there a filesystem that works well under Linux, MacOS X, and Windows? Linux has HFS+ support but apparently doesn't support journaling and there's also an issue with the case-insensitivity of HFS+. Are we stuck with crummy VFAT forever or are there efforts underway to bring a modern filesystem (I'm thinking something like ZFS, BeFS, or XFS) to all platforms? Or are there other clever solutions like storing ISO images and loop-mounting those?"

Comments

Forget hard drive

[www.sorehands.com]

Just get a USB card punch and reader. I think 029 punch code is pretty much standard.

Re:Maybe ext2?

[Anonymous Coward]

However ä,å and ö characters in filenames get screwed up. Those letters aren't used in American English. You must be a terrorist. Why do you hate America and our freedom?

Re:You're not very smart, are you?

[Anonymous Coward]

He's right. ReiserFS is a KILLER file system, show some respect.

Re:You're not very smart, are you?

[rs79]

" stop calling it MurdererFS"

AllegedMurdererFS ?

(is there a decent filesystem, that unlike NTFS, works with Win98+FreeBSD, too?)

Re:userspace....

[EveLibertine]

I am pretty sure you are missing some words or punctuation or something.