Can I reformat NTFS ext USB HDU to use in Linux?

[laan97ac]

I have an external 80GB USB harddrive that is currently NTSF. I have given up getting Linux to read it as non-root, and I would like to be able to write to it as well. So I have cleaned it all, and I am now considering reformatting to something Linux can read and write. I am on a dual boot XP and Mandriva 2006 laptop, and I use Linux as much as possible (95% of the time)

 

I guess that if I reformat the drive to be FAT32 then I could use it for both XP and Linux, and both could read/write and I would not have to worry about being root/non-root in order to get access. This would be optimal, but I read so much about FAT32 stability and data security is compromised compared to NTSF. And if FAT32 cannot handle sizes more than 40GB, what do I do?

 

I would therefore consider making the external harddrive 100% linux. How do I format the harddrive so that I have read/write access all the time, regardless of whether I am root or another user? What are the options, what filesystem would I choose? And how do I go about formatting without messing up?

 

All advice greatly appreciated

 

Thanx!

[Gul Dukat]

I've done something quite similar.

I've plugged in my external harddrive and opened MCC. From there I removed the NTFS-partition and formatted it as ext3. So I could access it from my Linux pc's.

I've also got an external harddrive of 80GB, on which I've created 3 partitions of FAT32. This way I don't exceed the maximum of 32GB for FAT32. You can create a larger partition of FAT32 with MCC, but then you would get stability issues.

The disadvantage of FAT32 I found, was that it can't handle files larger then 4GB. For example, iso-files of a DVD.

[aRTee]

In terms of data security, it's an external drive. It may get dropped. Such is the nature of external drives - not having your data backed up elsewhere is madness, no matter what the filesystem.

 

For internal drives, I wouldn't actually like to have one with FAT32 just in case of a system reset/crash, because you may have to wait a long time if it needs to get checked.

 

Have you considered to use a small (relatively speaking) FAT32 partition (10GB) and a large ext3 partition - the FAT32 just in case you (or friends you're visiting at or so) want to write on it from within Windows (yeah, I know about the ext3 driver for windows, but I wouldn't trust windows with any data anywhere,... the best security from windows viruses and such is if windows can't actually see my files. Well, easy for me to say, I don't have windows..)

 

To make the ext3 partition read-writeable to everyone, you need to create directories in the partition and change ownership of those to your regular users.

man chown

for more info.

 

Basically, it will be like a Linux partition, so with all attributes that you can have.

You can of course create a dir that is r/w to all:

man chmod

for more info.

[scarecrow]

You *can* make this drive 100% Linux (ext3). Accessing it read-only within windows is free (several free windows ext2 readers, plus the Total Commander ext/reiser addon- Total Commander is never expiring, uncrippled shareware, the only limitation being a negger when it starts), but for full read/write access you must shed 30$ for Paragon ext2anywhere.

http://www.ext2fs-anywhere.com/

The other solution is formatting the drive as NTFS, and then either using the commercial solution (not cheap), or the free one.

The commercial stuff:

http://ntfs-linux.com/

Working, but not cleanly building round every kernel, ans at times slow (read access is certainly slower than the native NTFS read access of the Linux kernel).

The free stuff:

http://www.jankratochvil.net/project/captive/

It also works (provided that your partition is smaller than 128GB), but it is DOG slow (= much slower than an average USB 1.1 link), typically some 35-40 KB/sec. If the above limitations aren't a problem for you, then go on...

FAT32 is fully supported natively, but it does have lots of restrictions (partitions effectively limited to 32G, no recovery journal, max. filesize 4G)

Edited November 30, 2005 by scarecrow