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

Moving Target

[gadzook33]

Not really, right? Even if there was, Microsoft doesn't seem to be interested in keeping it that way. With the "advent" of Vista and whatever relational-style FS they might try to forcably upgrade us to in the future, what are the odds of the prototypical modern journaling, etc FS being shared across the two? My guess is you're stuck with ext on linux and NTFS or whatever else on Windows. Of course, you could run NTFS on Linux if you've got two big brass ones.

Re:Oblig. Obvious Solution

[cyphercell]

I'm not so sure you even read the summary. Course it's 10am on saturday so I don't blame you.

Have any of you read the post you are replying to?

[danbeck]

Have any of you read the post you are replying to? He's asking for a solution for multiple platforms, not just windows and linux. If you read his question, he uses Linux, Mac OS X and uses a Windows partition for games. Solutions that only work on windows and linux or linux and bsd are USELESS. Stop answering with your favorite non-portable file system and answer the question, or STFU please.

Re:Have any of you read the post you are replying

[danbeck]

nfts-3g was the only good answer. I should have mentioned that, but the problem is a whole, not just a windows issue. Assuming that something works because OS X is posix is wrong as we are talking about data here, often un-recoverable and damned important. Stability and maturity is too important to leave up to chance.

Re:wait for ZFS

[Anonymous Coward]

That doesn't make any sense. FreeBSD is using sun's ZFS code with only a few changes (for stuff like jails).

Your Problem doesnt have a solution buddy

[pcontezini]

Hi, I have exactly the same problem, One MacbookPro, One PC, and another Linux. The fact is, there isnt a portable filesystem, if you are planning on ext2/3, the mac os x driver is unstable like the hell, and will make you loose your data and crash your system, as it happens to mine. Fat and fat32 will work but with small disks only, and NTFS your linux/macos will damage it within time. I Have a 400 GB Sata external disk and currently using HFS, because its the only one that doesnt corrupt the data from time to time, and you have drivers for windows/linux. I know it isnt the best choice but if you plan to keep your data, its my advice.

Shared storage, not shared drive

[zzatz]

Trying to use a filesystem across multiple platforms is painful. That's a clue that you're tackling the wrong problem. You don't need to share filesystems, you need to share files. Different problem with different solutions.

I set up an old PC with Linux to solve many needs. NFS and Samba provide a common pool of storage for every OS that I use. Since setting that up, I haven't ever though about shared partitions. They aren't needed.

Linux and Samba worked for me, but that's not the only solution. A NAS box might work better for you. The point is that you need shared storage, not a shared drive. Every OS supports network storage. Every OS supports backups across the network.

Re:Shared storage, not shared drive

[linhux]

One reason many people (including me) get external harddrives is that they frequently need to move them between different locations. I have a portable 160 GB that's always in my backpack, that contains VMware virtual machines and file system images that I need to be able to access from several computer at several different physical locations (and indeed different computer networks, sometimes without an Internet connection).

In summary: there is a real need for sharing a drive between different systems.

Re:Shared storage, not shared drive

[phliar]

You're thinking firmly inside the box.

Here's my scenario: I have OpenBSD, Linux, OpenSolaris, and OS X machines. (I don't do Windows, but I hear others do.) For backups I got a 350GB hard disk and a USB drive case. I'd like to format the disk so it can be mounted on all the systems so everything is backed up on that one disk. If there's an earthquake or fire, there's only one little box to grab. And obviously I'd like to be able to look at all my files from any platform. (All my machines are not on the same network, so forget NFS.)

Sorry sir, you can't do that.

(Jesus Christ, they're all open source systems, enough with the "mine is bigger than yours" posturing! Screw journalling, just basic POSIX semantics would be good enough. Maybe standardize on basic UFS.)

Forget it

[IntergalacticWalrus]

Personally I have a golden rule I always keep in mind when dealing with cross-OS file system usage: Never trust write support on foreign filesystem drivers. FAT12/16/32 is the only exception, since it's so old and primitive that anyone should have fully mastered the support of it by now. But apart from that, I'll never believe a filesystem driver to reliably write on ext2/3 outside of Linux, or HFS+ outside of OS X, or NTFS outside of Windows.

Modern filesystems are complicated beasts. One tiny error can have catastrophic results. Native filesystem drivers are the results of many years of real-life testing by millions of users. Can you really believe a third-party filesystem driver to be solid enough to write on a foreign filesystem?

Read-only support is OK because it's a magnitude easier to implement, though.

The only viable solution to cross-OS filesystem usage (without crippling yourself to FAT32) is networking.

You're not very smart, are you?

[Smeagel]

The reason why it's a proprietary one that is "the best cross platform one", is because the proprietary OS's refuse to support other filesystems. If windows would support Reiserfs, it'd be a much better option for cross platform than AWFUL ntfs/fat32. But unfortunately M$, for obvious reasons, refuses to do that. Meaning that open source software has to attempt to reverse engineer a crappy file system and use it, instead of having the best filesystem win out for system users of ALL platforms.

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

[Enderandrew]

It may turn out that Hans Reiser is guilty. However, he is innocent until found guilty. And if he is guilty, that doesn't taint everything he ever did. That is like saying Germany should have recounted all the construction, development and wealth of the Hitler era. If you drive on any part of the autobahn constructed during his reign, then clearly you must be a nazi, right?

So, please drop the trolling and stop calling it MurdererFS. It is an insult to the many employees of NameSys who developed the code, and continue to do so today. Not to mention, it would certainly be an unfair accusation if Reiser is acquitted.

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

[644bd346996]

He is not "innocent until found guilty." He is presumed innocent until found guilty. Big perspective difference.

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

[TheNetAvenger]

NTFS is also unusably slow after 6 months of heavy usage, and requires regular reformatting

Wow this is news to anyone that knows anything about the NTFS structure.

I love how people can make garbage claims like this, yet there are companies that are running NTFS volumes that are 15years old without any incident. You know companies like EDS, GM, and other agencies like Lockheed and NASA.

But I'm sure youf 'assessment' of NTFS is much smarter than the 'rocket scientists' at these organizations.

Let's take your starting line "NTFS is also unusably slow after 6 months of heavy usage."

Would you care to explain how this could possibliy, logistically or physically even be possble? Fragmentation is the only thing that could slow a FS over time unless the FS used a really stupid indexing system for the File Table. And yet not only is NTFS is still one of the best FS for handing fragmentation, ever, it has a well managed and fast file table indexing system.

So please do englighten us all with your knowledge so I can call my contacts at NASA and tell them how stupid they are for trusting NTFS and explain to them that their systems are getting slower.

The lack of this competitive technological drive is probably why Windows has been the same POS for the last 20 years.


Or maybe it is because the NT team designed the OS so that it was highly extensible and would meet OS requirements for 15-20 at the minimum, considering it still has core kernel features that are not even used or exposed in Vista yet even.

The problem is, people like you, see Windows as Win3.1/Win9x and Windows of today running on the NT Core is a different OS, a different design, shares no code, and yet still has the same UI concepts so people aren't bright enough to realize that the underlying NT architecture is actually one of the few things MS has ever done right.

Go read up on NTFS, and Windows NT before you come back, you are only embarrasing yourself, and that is hard to do on Slashdot when talking about Windows and NT.

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

[SillyNickName]

Remember that feature wise it was doing most of what it does back in 1991 when other FS drastically PALED in comparison.

As a blanket statement, that just isn't true. It had more features than some other file systems, but less than others. Microsoft didn't exactly invent NTFS from scratch, they copied much of it from elsewhere and from some other systems that NTFS and Windows still can't match. Ever hear of FILES-11 and VMS? I thought not. Believe it or not, the whole world of computers isn't just Windows vs. Mac vs. Linux vs. BSD.

And even today the only FS that comes close to being as features as NTFS is ZFS and it even is missing several features NTFS has had for 10 years.

There you go again. NTFS has some features that some other file systems don't and others have some features that NTFS doesn't. It depends on what you're looking for.

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

[Smeagel]

Clearly your system and maintenance are above and beyond the average user. The common user does not do that. There's no need to do that on competing file systems. And I know it's spelled "smeagol" you arrogant ass. It was an intentional misspelling 15 years ago knowing that I wanted one name and I didn't want to deal with it being taken on various sites and have to think up multiple names. But I appreciate the fact that you think you're so smart because you can maintain a windows raid array and falsely correct people on LOTR...lol. Nothing makes me laugh more than a windows "guru" bragging about a raid array.

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

[jon_anderson_ca]

he is innocent until found guilty

Well, actually, he's either innocent or guilty, but he should be presumed innocent until proven otherwise.

Now, if we were talking about a quantum trial, he'd be both innocent and guilty until the evidence was observed, at which point he'd be one or the other.

All jokes aside, you do make a good point: whether or not Hans Reiser ever killed anybody (and we shouldn't jump to conclusions), the folks at NameSys have built a sweet filesystem or two. My question is: if Hans Reiser does go to prison, is there anybody else who could step up to a "maintainer" role and see Reiser4 (which may be renamed) integrated into the kernel?

Re:The irony

[homer_ca]

There are ext2 drivers for Windows, but they're definitely not ready for production use. There's just not much interest in them compared to NTFS on Linux. If we want to promote ext2/3 as a Free cross platform filesystem, let's throw some support behind a good Windows ext2 driver.

Get the job done.

[fm6]

Use FAT32. Yes, it sucks as a file system. But it's fine for your stated goals (backup and transfer), and it has universal compatibility. Don't discard an optimal solution just because it makes you feel uncool.

Re:Network it, or NTFS

[Anonymous Coward]

Other people have commented, only read-only. So NTFS is not the solution, I guess.

Broken or not, NTFS is the solution. Windows supports FAT and NTFS. Microsoft doesn't exactly go out of their way to be compatible with other systems, so if you want to share a file system between Windows and something else, it has to be one of those two.

The smart thing to do would be to stop using Windows, but you're not going to do that, you're just going to whine and take it.

Re:Doesn't work with a Macbook.

[jabuzz]

You do realize that for roughly the first 20 years Microsoft did not document FAT either, and Linux support comes from reverse engineering efforts?

I guess that you also don't use Samba either :-)

One important limitation of FAT32

[El_Oscuro]

4GB per file. If your backup job creates large tarballs, your hosed. At work, I was trying to backup a 20GB file to a USB external drive, and it told me the drive was out of space, even though it still had 700GB left. I had to format it NTFS for it to work.