Sonntag, 23. November 2008

Filesystems for any OS...

I'm just thinking about filesystems on my next USB-Backup Disk.

Status

Currently i have backup disks formatted with FAT32 (for use with all OS), AFS (for OS X-Time Machine) and ext3 (for linux backups). My main backup disks formatted with FAT, because at this time "Mac OS X" did not support anything other.
I currently plan to by new disks, so it's time to think about this filesytem-mix (or filesystem-mess).


needed Features

Here are my features, i'm dreaming of:
  • journalling: my backup disk should be able to hold my data, even if the OS crashes the disk losses power.
  • filesize: it would be nice to be able to store at least 4.7GB ISO-DVD-Images (i sometime master the images on one PC, but burn on a differen one) and to store my full-length DVB-?-Movies (captured from TV) on the disk without splitting.
  • hardlinks: Do you know Apple's time machine? then you know why hardlinks are something fantastic. you can copy wih "rsync --links-desk=..." and have something like a versioned backup for your data. The best: you do incremental backups, but can delete old backups as if they are full backups.
i do need the backup with several Operating systems. If my Macbook is sunk in the toilette, i'd like to access my data via linux or windows. (Which is quite difficult, i i have only the time machine backup - who can read AFS with this apple partitioning??)


Possibilities

a bigger and maybe for you better ist is en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_file_systems

FAT32

  • OS-Support: excellent
  • biggest filesize: 4GB (bad)
  • journalling: no, but many tools can repair FAT.
  • hardlinks: no

NTFS

  • OS-Support: not sufficient:
    • win: excellent,
    • linux: good (ntfs-3g: read/write),
    • mac: native: read-only, ntfs-3g should works
  • biggest filesize: 16TBGB (but not shure, if anyone but win can read >4GB-Files)
  • journalling: yes (at least with win, not shure what ntfs-3g does here)
  • hardlinks: yes

ext3

  • OS-Support: good
    • win: http://www.fs-driver.org/ -> without journalling
    • linux: native
    • mac: not shure yet (wikipedia say's: "possible with ext2fsx" -> without journalling)
  • biggest filesize: 16GB (enough)
  • journalling: yes (not windows)
  • hardlinks: yes
Looking at the above mentioned list at wikipedia, i guess these are all i can choose.


Results

I don't like to use NTFS, because it is not open sources and with each new windows version, i'm not shure if features are added that break my linux/mac (write) support. The restore possibillities are either cost money or come from Microsoft. The tools from MS are okay, i guess, but i the need windows to repair. This is dangerous in an emergency! (Just try to find a Windows-Live-CD...)

FAT32 is ancient, though it lack eatures of modern files systems. I will use this filessystem on "transfer usb disks" because anyone can read/write this without problems.

ext2/3 i'm not shure about this. the Mac ext2fsx project has a beta from 11/2006, Leopard appeared 10/2007. The filesystem itself has all features i need. Read/write support for windows and Linux is good, but Mac.... .

Anyone knows a better alternative?



Links

The Blogosphere seems to prefere "ext2/3"

Montag, 17. November 2008

Websites...

I currently help with the techincal problem on a website - ioxio - Premium products in ceramic and plastic. Even if you do not plan to buy knifw sharpeners (if you already own one), you may want to go to to Sharping Tips.
Sometimes it's fun to write an own Online-CMS, sometime (now) not. Right now i'm doing some SE-Optimizing, I home in some days a google search for ioxio will point to this site - should not be that difficult.

To be honest, i hope this blog entry will help, so that's why i'm writing this. Greetings to Nadine ;-)