Cross-OS File System That Sucks Less?

Posted by kdawson on Saturday July 28, 2007 @05:13AM from the just-mount-it dept.

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?"

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Quick answer: No by WebHikerOriginal · 2007-07-28 05:17 · Score: 1, Troll

Since you have to find the lowest common denominator supported by all your platforms, your weak link is obviously (and as usual) Microsoft Windows.
So the most "modern" fs you'll be able to use is unfortunately NTFS.