This is your brain on a brick wall. (File System question)

[Raven]

Ok I've effectively hit a roadblock. For some reason my process of understanding has slowed a bit.

I'm a Windows guy. I've had training in Unix but as I've stated before I'm a Linux newbie.

NTFS is arguably a great file system to have. Currently Linux only supports Read operations, and Write operations could very well destroy the system. So this X's out using NTFS as a primary file system, correct?

So what file system should I use with Linux? I am assuming there's a "standard" UNIX/Linux file system.. *Duh* yeah I know I'm asking essentially an "ID-10-T question". Like I said my brain hit a brick wall and I dunno why.

Thanks :thumb:

[dandyman]

The filesystem that is becoming the "New" standard is ext3. The ext3 filesystem is a journaled filesystem based on the venerable Linux standard ext2. While some may argue that ReiserFS, is a better performer, ext3's backwards compatibility with ext2 has made it a big success already.

NTFS and any flavor of FAT are not appropriate fs types for your main Linux filesystems. In fact, NTFS should be avoided if you would like to share the data on that partition with Linux on a dual boot machine.

My dual boot machine has NTFS filesystems for Windows, ext3 for Linux, and one FAT32 for common data to share between the two. This is where I store my mp3's, docs, etc. The optimal configuration, which I had until recently was a small file server and just ket my docs there, but other factors eliminated that configuration for the time being.

I hope that helps clear things up some. I avoided details on purpose, because...

a) I'm not a fs expert
b) They can get really detailed and complicated.

[Raven]

Thanks for taking the time to answer that, Dandyman. Actually that helped quite a bit. I was unfamiliar with the different types of available file systems available under Linux.

I already have an 80gig FAT32 drive that I store all multimedia/shared files on anyways, so that might prove to be handy in the future. My Windows XP partition is NTFS.

If anyone else has any information I'd appreciate it!

[Oldbugger]

Agree fully with Dandyman except I only have one "Windows partition" and that is fat32 .... NTFS is not well supported in Linux and should be avoided where possible...nearly all the Linux distros use ext3 now as their default file system. I haven't play with any of the others yet (and don't really have any need except to experiment)....

[Bahamut Zer0]

Having a FAT32 filesystem and using it for multimedia storage is prety silly mind you. The maximum filesize of any single file on a FAT32 partition is 4gig. Now that we have DVDs and the such, you might find NTFS not only faster, but more appropriate for storing and manipulating large multimedia files. (NTFS can store single files as large as the hard-disc can hold ie- a 20gig hdd can hold 1 single 20gig file and so on)

[Oldbugger]

Good point...that doesn't affect me but it is a limitation to be aware of if it is an issue for u .....