ntfs vs. vfat

Message

stp_1993 · Post by **stp_1993** » Fri Jun 06, 2008 1:10 am

I have Windows Vista dual-booting from my laptop (I know, I know, ...)

I have an extra partition for Windows and Linux data.
Should I format this partition as vfat or ntfs?
What are the relative merits?

I know that vfat write support is completely stable. How stable is ntfs write support? Should I use ntfs-3g or ntfsprogs/ntfsmount?

How fault tolerant are both filesystems? Which is most likely to recover cleanly if my computer crashes during disk i/o?

Thanks!

gentoo_dude · Post by **gentoo_dude** » Fri Jun 06, 2008 2:10 am

Do it vfat if you want to write/read on the partition from both OS'es.

stp_1993 · Post by **stp_1993** » Fri Jun 06, 2008 3:39 am

Why? There is now NTFS write support.

yabbadabbadont · Post by **yabbadabbadont** » Fri Jun 06, 2008 4:01 am

stp_1993 wrote:Why? There is now NTFS write support.

There has been ntfs write support for quite a while. It is the quality of the support that is in question...

How important is the data you want to store on this partition? If it is important, stick with vfat, and do regular backups (which you should anyway

). The main limitation of vfat is a 4GB limit on file size.

Devport · Post by **Devport** » Fri Jun 06, 2008 6:37 am

For my shared data partition I used vfat for a long time. Then I was hit by the 4GB limit due to video recording and switched to ntfs which turned out to be awfully slow on Windows when it comes to video cutting. Now I use ext3 and the open source ext2 driver [1] for windows which also supports ext3 without the journaling capabilities.

Theres also another free driver called ext2ifs [2] which is even faster but I prefer open source.

My experience so far :

ext3 on Windows is faster than ntfs & vfat [3]
ext3 has no 4GB limit
ext3 is a stable, journaled filesystem
ext3 may be (un)mounted on demand on Windows ( I dont want my valuable data to be visible all the time on an insecure os like Windows )
ext3 may be easily upgraded to ext4 later

I did not have a single problem as of yet.

Edit : There are some things one must take care of. Files with names Windows does not support, e.g. filenames with a ":" and I am not sure but maybe hidden files - those starting with a "." wont be visible on Windows.

[1] http://ext2fsd.sourceforge.net/projects ... tm#ext2fsd
[2] http://www.fs-driver.org/
[3] Benchmarked vfat, ntfs and ext3 filesystems on Windows - ext3 is fastest because no journaling is done on Windows. On Linux vfat is faster than ext3 which may change with an upgrade to ext4.

muhsinzubeir · Post by **muhsinzubeir** » Fri Jun 06, 2008 7:09 am

thanks Devport...for sure i will try this one.Im now using ntfs/ntfs-3g but its not very cool, but i didnt know about ext2/ext3 for window was possible

irgu · Post by **irgu** » Fri Jun 06, 2008 10:03 am

muhsinzubeir wrote:thanks Devport...for sure i will try this one.Im now using ntfs/ntfs-3g but its not very cool, but i didnt know about ext2/ext3 for window was possible

I found ntfs-3g more stable on Linux than ext2 on Windows. Maybe because of the OS

Anyway, I'd be interested what problems do you have with ntfs-3g? The gentoo stable version is sometimes old a bit but the latest is also available from portage and I didn't have problems during intensive use. They use a fairly extensive test suite: http://www.ntfs-3g.org/quality.html

muhsinzubeir · Post by **muhsinzubeir** » Fri Jun 06, 2008 10:28 am

Anyway, I'd be interested what problems do you have with ntfs-3g?

-The biggest problem it is encouraging the use of microsoft technology, en im anti-microsoft.That will make me shift to ext3/ext2 both for my partition en my external usb hdd.
-The issue that ext3/ext2 isnt stable on window, i think nothing is stable in window

-The problem with ntfs-3g is the security issues, this fs doesnt respect fstab entry afaik.That will prevent you from user mounting with this fs, if u found ways to give ur user access to mount ntfs-3g fs pls let me know.
-Another advantage is gain in performance whem on linux as mentioned in the above post.I would agree that ext2/ext3 works better with linux than ntfs3-g

P:S
I dont spend lots of time working on window except for playing counter strike en other games.But sometimes there is a need to access some files while im occasionally playin...like listenin to mp3 en watever, but no heavy data transfer whem workin on window.

Edit:
refer to this topic for ntfs-3g problem

irgu · Post by **irgu** » Fri Jun 06, 2008 1:52 pm

> -The biggest problem it is encouraging the use of microsoft technology,
> en im anti-microsoft.That will make me shift to ext3/ext2 both for my
> partition en my external usb hdd.

For me it's only an open source technology

> -The problem with ntfs-3g is the security issues, this fs doesnt respect
> fstab entry afaik.That will prevent you from user mounting with this fs,
> if u found ways to give ur user access to mount ntfs-3g fs pls let me
> know.

It works fine in my case. I followed the help here:
http://ntfs-3g.org/support.html#useroption2

> -Another advantage is gain in performance whem on linux as mentioned in
> the above post.I would agree that ext2/ext3 works better with linux than
> ntfs3-g

I've found ntfs-3g to be faster than ext3. I remember this was discussed
here earlier. The reason is probably that NTFS uses the efficient extents
to address data on the disks but ext3 doesn't. ext4 solves this problem and
I hope it will be faster than ntfs-3g

I've found a recent benchmark here. XFS was the fastest, then ntfs-3g and
the slowest is ext3:
http://www.nabble.com/Re:--Linux-NTFS-U ... 70363.html

> refer to this topic for ntfs-3g problem

For me it seems to be a /bin/mount problem which calls ntfs-3g unprivileged
even if root granted access to the user in /etc/fstab. If ntfs-3g ignored
this then unprivileged users could mount any NTFS partition which would be
a serious security problem.

muhsinzubeir · Post by **muhsinzubeir** » Fri Jun 06, 2008 3:19 pm

thanks irqu for the info en correcting me on that performance of ext3.
But still if i have to choose between ntfs en ext3 im going for ext3 as far as im concerned there will be more stuffs to deal with than just /bin/mount.If ntfs doesnt work properly or having trouble with it, then ext3 works better with /bin/mount

why having the troubles of ntfs en ntfs-3g while ext3 just works out of the box

ntfs was originally designed for window

irgu · Post by **irgu** » Fri Jun 06, 2008 4:51 pm

muhsinzubeir wrote:why having the troubles of ntfs en ntfs-3g while ext3 just works out of the box

ntfs-3g works the same as ext3 for root. The ntfs-3g problem exists only in case of unprivileged mount what ext3 doesn't support at all (I mean running file system code as non-system user). If ext3 or any other kernel file system crashes then the system is gone. If ntfs-3g crashes then no other software is affected. Well, unless it's the root filesystem what Ubuntu's WUBI does

Anyway, for Linux partitions I also use only Linux file systems

NTFS is good for interoperability with other (non-Linux) people and systems without file size and other limitations.

djdunn · Post by **djdunn** » Sat Jun 07, 2008 1:39 pm

there are ext3 drivers for windows

stp_1993 · Post by **stp_1993** » Sun Jun 08, 2008 11:21 pm

Okay. My partition currently has ID 7 = HPFS/NTFS.
Do I have to change it?
Should I make it
ID b W95 FAT32
or
ID c W95 FAT32 (LBA)
??

Thanks

muhsinzubeir · Post by **muhsinzubeir** » Mon Jun 09, 2008 7:36 am

use LBA{logic block addressing}...probably it has something to do with bios to tell it that the disk is bigger than some size....As probably you know that fat fs has some limitation.Why dont you just go for ntfs or ext3, its quite safe especially the ext3.
Those fat is only for historical purposes ... as it will be for all microsoft technology in the future

Cyker · Post by **Cyker** » Mon Jun 09, 2008 11:44 am

ntfs-3g is very stable, but slow

I don't trust the ext2/3 drivers in Windows

vfat is the most compatible but also the most limited

I got around all problems by using my NAS as a go-between - SMB is universal

irgu · Post by **irgu** » Tue Jun 10, 2008 1:54 pm

Cyker wrote:ntfs-3g is very stable, but slow

Yes, it's stable and thankfully I'm happy with the speed too. I get 50 MB/s with internal and 25-30 MB/sec with external USB disks (USB bandwidth/protocol limitation). Ext3 is typically slower (ext4 should fix this by using extents the same way as ntfs-3g) but XFS is faster (which also uses extents).

A common reason ntfs-3g being slow is if USB runs in full or low-speed mode. Make sure you attached the external device to the high-speed port and there are no slow devices on the same port. USB cable can be also an issue sometimes.

stp_1993 · Post by **stp_1993** » Wed Jun 18, 2008 9:58 pm

Cyker wrote: vfat is the most compatible but also the most limited

Besides the 4 gb file issue, how is vfat limited?

timeBandit · Post by **timeBandit** » Thu Jun 19, 2008 5:09 am

stp_1993 wrote:Besides the 4 gb file issue, how is vfat limited?

It does not support POSIX-style permissions, modes and ownership, nor can you create special files such as sockets or named pipes (FIFOs) on a VFAT filesystem.