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

Network it, or NTFS

[Anonymous Coward]

NTFS-3G

Re:Network it, or NTFS

[my $anity 0]

sudo apt-get install ntfs-3g

Re:Network it, or NTFS

[fd0man]

Not really. While ext2/3 are, as I understand it, not *completely* cross-platform (I don't think the Mac can read ext2/3 drives, but I could be mistaken), between Windows and Linux it works just fine. Google for "ext2ifs", which I have used with high degrees of success in the past. The way that I keep my data on USB drives, I make a small FAT partition to house the ext2ifs installer for Windows systems, and the remainder of the device formatted as ext3. ext2ifs doesn't do journaling, but when the FS is attached to a Linux box it'll take advantage of ext3 features on the drive.

Re:Network it, or NTFS

[hahiss]

Actually, OS X can read and write ext2/3 with this bit of software:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/ext2fsx/

Like the Windows software you mention, it works as ext2, which means no journaling; it read and wrote to my ext3 partitions just fine when I used several years ago (IIRC).

Ext3

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.fs-driver.org/

I just use a external drive formatted in EXT3, and for windows files i just install the Ext3 driver.

ext2 supported everywhere

[markybob]

ext2 is supported everywhere and it's far better than fat32 or ntfs. for windows, http://www.fs-driver.org/ and for osx http://sourceforge.net/projects/ext2fsx/

Re:Quick answer: No

[Hatta]

There are ext2 drivers available for windows. ext2 is just ext3 without journaling. It should be a viable option.

Windows is the limitation

[halfloaded]

The biggest problem here is the lack of file system support in Windows. On a linux box, it is trivial to add support for virtually any file system type: NTFS, HFS, FAT, etc... The list goes on.

Since MacOSX is BSD based, I would be willing to bet that similar projects and support can be found (but, I Am Not A Mac Fanboy).

On Windows, you are pretty much stuck using either NTFS or FAT. FAT volumes can not be created in windows larger than 32GB. Although, you could create the partition using 3rd party tools to get beyond that limitation. I have had some success mounting ext3 partitions using Ext2 Installable File System For Windows or Ext2 File System Driver for Windows.

Personally, from my experience, VFAT or NTFS are about your only options.

Been there, Done that

[dfn_deux]

Having been in the exact same situation I've tried all sorts of different solutions and I'd say the best current solution is NTFS, which is out of the box natively supported on both OSX and Windows (natch) and also available R/O in the default linux kernel as well as having strong R/W support now via ntfs-3g. Of course fat32 still works just fine for this application, but it's getting a little long in the tooth as far as advanced features and modern storage needs go (c'mon what is up with those weak filesize limits)!?!? And I've had some limited success with using ext2/3 on windows and linux but found that the windows kernel driver for ext2 was not very stable in my config and the userspace tools to read/write ext3 in windows was far too kludgy for my tastes; I haven't had a chance to try ext2/3 on OSX.

Re:Doesn't work with a Macbook.

[Simon80]

See above.

The NTFS-3G driver is an open source, freely available read/write NTFS driver for Linux, FreeBSD, Mac OS X, NetBSD, and Haiku. It provides safe and fast handling of the Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows 2000 and Windows Vista file systems. Most POSIX file system operations are supported, with the exception of full file ownership and access right support.

Re:Doesn't work with a Macbook.

[linhux]

NTFS is exactly what I use for my portable hard drive that I share between Windows, Linux and Mac computers. The main reason for choosing NTFS was that I need to store big virtual machine disks where files are sometimes many gigabytes in size. In Mac OS X and Linux, I use NTFS-3G to access the drive. It works, but it's very slow when transferring many and/or large files, so I would love to have a better alternative.

Re:Why not just use ext2?

[Stalin]

Because it doesn't work. The ext2 driver for OS X is _VERY_ unstable. The last time I tried it, about five months ago, the driver caused a kernel panic. After rebooting, OS X wouldn't read the drive anymore. It was unable to seek the disk. I thought it had caused a head crash until I hooked it up to a Mac without the driver installed; that one was able to see the disk and format it. Needless to say, I removed the ext2 driver.

FAT is really the only viable option at the moment. The problem there is that you will be limited to files 2GB in size. Have a DVD image you want to access from all three platforms? Forget it. You'll either have to burn it to a DVD or use FTP, because SAMBA is limited by the same 2GB limit.

Someone else posted a response about using UDF. I'll have to look into that, but I'm not sure OS X or Windows will format a hard drive to UDF. Well, at least not with OS X's "Disk Utility" application.