Finding a suitable filesystem

Finding a suitable filesystem

[Michael Whapples]

Hello,
I am wondering what filesystem is best for a USB memory stick. The
problem is that fat/fat32 is very poor on the permissions, but most
systems can read/write it, whereas ntfs is poorly supported under Linux
(and I am not certain about how good the permission support is) and
things like ext3, reiserfs and other unix FSs aren't supported on
windows. So is there mount options for fat/fat32 which improves the case
somewhat under Linux, or might ntfs be a good compromise as most of the
Linux systems I will be using it on will be mine so I can install
ntfs-3g or other drivers (and windows 9x seems to have disappeared
sufficiently that I won't have too many of those), or is there a windows
driver for one of the unix filesystems (and if I want to be able to use
it on more than just my machine I suppose I could make a small fat32
partition where I could have the driver available should a windows
machine not have it).

Thanks for any pointers to information or advice people can give.

From
Michael Whapples

Re: Finding a suitable filesystem

[Gregory Nowak]

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I think that ext2 would be your best bet. The projects I'm about to
mention, can work with ext2, but aren't able to work with the journal
part of ext3. Also, you don't want a journaling file system on a flash
drive, since that would make the drive wear out faster.

http://ext2fsd.sourceforge.net/
This is free, as in free source, but I haven't used it, due to the
fact that it was still unstable beta software back when I was needing
to access ext2 partitions under the other popular os. Things may have
changed there since.

http://www.fs-driver.org/
This is what I personally use, and I've found it to be very stable and
reliable. It's freeware, but isn't free source, which doesn't bother
me, though I realize it might bother some. It runs under nt4, 2000, as
well as x86 versions of xp, and 2003. I don't know about vista.

I also remember there was a set of tools which could read ext2
partitions, and do very limited write operations. These ran under dos,
win95, 98, and me. I however don't have the url for that bookmarked,
and am unable to find it. If it's something you're interested in, then
maybe someone else will post the url for that. Hth.

Greg


On Sun, Jan 06, 2008 at 05:46:15PM +0000, Michael Whapples wrote:
> Hello,
> I am wondering what filesystem is best for a USB memory stick. The
> problem is that fat/fat32 is very poor on the permissions, but most
> systems can read/write it, whereas ntfs is poorly supported under Linux
> (and I am not certain about how good the permission support is) and
> things like ext3, reiserfs and other unix FSs aren't supported on
> windows. So is there mount options for fat/fat32 which improves the case
> somewhat under Linux, or might ntfs be a good compromise as most of the
> Linux systems I will be using it on will be mine so I can install
> ntfs-3g or other drivers (and windows 9x seems to have disappeared
> sufficiently that I won't have too many of those), or is there a windows
> driver for one of the unix filesystems (and if I want to be able to use
> it on more than just my machine I suppose I could make a small fat32
> partition where I could have the driver available should a windows
> machine not have it).
> 
> Thanks for any pointers to information or advice people can give.
> 
> From
> Michael Whapples
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> 

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Re: Finding a suitable filesystem

[Alex Snow]

I always format mine fat32 since I use them under both windows and 
unix and really don't care about permitions all that much on these 
devices.
On Sun, Jan 06, 2008 at 05:46:15PM +0000, Michael Whapples 
wrote:
> Hello,
> I am wondering what filesystem is best for a USB memory stick. The
> problem is that fat/fat32 is very poor on the permissions, but most
> systems can read/write it, whereas ntfs is poorly supported under Linux
> (and I am not certain about how good the permission support is) and
> things like ext3, reiserfs and other unix FSs aren't supported on
> windows. So is there mount options for fat/fat32 which improves the case
> somewhat under Linux, or might ntfs be a good compromise as most of the
> Linux systems I will be using it on will be mine so I can install
> ntfs-3g or other drivers (and windows 9x seems to have disappeared
> sufficiently that I won't have too many of those), or is there a windows
> driver for one of the unix filesystems (and if I want to be able to use
> it on more than just my machine I suppose I could make a small fat32
> partition where I could have the driver available should a windows
> machine not have it).
> 
> Thanks for any pointers to information or advice people can give.
> 
> From
> Michael Whapples
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup

-- 
There are two types of Linux developers - those who can spell, and
those who can't.  There is a constant pitched battle between the two.
	-- From one of the post-1.1.54 kernel update messages posted to c.o.l.a

Re: Finding a suitable filesystem

[Michael Whapples]

>From a lot of googling about I was coming to the ext2 conclusion.

Out of interest why would a journaling FS wear out the drive quicker? I
haven't seen comment of this in my searches.

Thanks
Michael Whapples
On Sun, 2008-01-06 at 17:04 -0700, Gregory Nowak wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
> 
> I think that ext2 would be your best bet. The projects I'm about to
> mention, can work with ext2, but aren't able to work with the journal
> part of ext3. Also, you don't want a journaling file system on a flash
> drive, since that would make the drive wear out faster.
> 
> http://ext2fsd.sourceforge.net/
> This is free, as in free source, but I haven't used it, due to the
> fact that it was still unstable beta software back when I was needing
> to access ext2 partitions under the other popular os. Things may have
> changed there since.
> 
> http://www.fs-driver.org/
> This is what I personally use, and I've found it to be very stable and
> reliable. It's freeware, but isn't free source, which doesn't bother
> me, though I realize it might bother some. It runs under nt4, 2000, as
> well as x86 versions of xp, and 2003. I don't know about vista.
> 
> I also remember there was a set of tools which could read ext2
> partitions, and do very limited write operations. These ran under dos,
> win95, 98, and me. I however don't have the url for that bookmarked,
> and am unable to find it. If it's something you're interested in, then
> maybe someone else will post the url for that. Hth.
> 
> Greg
> 
> 
> 
> On Sun, Jan 06, 2008 at 05:46:15PM +0000, Michael Whapples wrote:
> > Hello,
> > I am wondering what filesystem is best for a USB memory stick. The
> > problem is that fat/fat32 is very poor on the permissions, but most
> > systems can read/write it, whereas ntfs is poorly supported under Linux
> > (and I am not certain about how good the permission support is) and
> > things like ext3, reiserfs and other unix FSs aren't supported on
> > windows. So is there mount options for fat/fat32 which improves the case
> > somewhat under Linux, or might ntfs be a good compromise as most of the
> > Linux systems I will be using it on will be mine so I can install
> > ntfs-3g or other drivers (and windows 9x seems to have disappeared
> > sufficiently that I won't have too many of those), or is there a windows
> > driver for one of the unix filesystems (and if I want to be able to use
> > it on more than just my machine I suppose I could make a small fat32
> > partition where I could have the driver available should a windows
> > machine not have it).
> > 
> > Thanks for any pointers to information or advice people can give.
> > 
> > From
> > Michael Whapples
> > 
> > 
> > _______________________________________________
> > Speakup mailing list
> > Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> > http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> > 
> 
> - -- 
> web site: http://www.romuald.net.eu.org
> gpg public key: http://www.romuald.net.eu.org/pubkey.asc
> skype: gregn1
> (authorization required, add me to your contacts list first)
> 
> - --
> Free domains: http://www.eu.org/ or mail dns-manager@EU.org
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> 
> 

Re: Finding a suitable filesystem

[Joseph C. Lininger]

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> Out of interest why would a journaling FS wear out the drive quicker?
> I haven't seen comment of this in my searches.

The reason has to do with the way journaling filesystems work. The
summary is this. Journaling filesystems contain a log or journal of
changes they are going to make to the filesystem. If you create a new
file, for example, the changes to the filesystem necessary to create the
file are recorded in the journal. Then the changes are made to the
actual filesystem. What this does is to provide filesystem consistancy
in the event your system crashes in the middle of a change to the
filesystem. That way you don't have to do an extensive check of the
filesystem to bring it to a consistant state. Replaying the journal
takes anywhere from a few seconds to a few minutes, instead of the
filesystem check taking anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours. I
should point out that most journaling filesystems don't journal all data
you write. They only journal changes to the metadata (structures used to
keep track of files in the filesystem). This is done for performance
reasons.

Now the reason why journaling filesystems ware out your drive faster is
that the filesystem typically allocates a specific portion for the
journal, then continuously writes to it every time a change is made to
the filesystem. Most flash drives have a chip which is rated for a
maximum of about 100000 writes. The
constant writing and rewriting of the portion allocated for the journal
causes the chip to ware out rather quickly. A write to the journal is
generated for, well, just about everything on a journaling filesystem
mounted read-write. The following are examples:

* File creation and removal
* Editing a file
* Any access of a file (if noatime option is not in use)
* Creation and removal of directories

Hope this helps.

Joe
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Re: Finding a suitable filesystem

[Joseph C. Lininger]

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Hello again,
I forgot to mention something I meant to write about before. You can use
fat32 and get a small amount of control over who can access files in
linux by using mount options. You can set the access mask, as well as
the owner and group for all files. These aren't stored in the
filesystem, so it's on a per-mount bases. But if it's just you accessing
it, you can probably use fat32 and /etc/fstab to do what you need. This
provides the best compatability if you need to use multiple operating
systems with the drive. I don't recommend doing this on actual hard
drives for a variety of reasons, but for something like a flash drive it
works just fine. It's the solution I use myself.
Joe
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