NTFS or Ext3 for partition shared with windows?

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DeathCarrot · Post by **DeathCarrot** » Thu Feb 15, 2007 6:43 pm

I'll be getting a shiny new computer next week and am planning on how I'm going to partition it. I'll be installing gentoo and Windows XP Pro on it (pretty much only for games), as well as making a big chunk of space available as primary storage for both OSs for things like home folders/my documents, downloads etc... Would I be better off making the shared partition NTFS and using the ntfs-3g driver, or make the partition Ext3 (writeback) and use the Ext2 IFS driver under Win XP?
Performance of course is a big player in the choice, which would be better from the perspective?
Is data corruption/recovery or stability an issue with either?
Any other offers for solutions are welcome, however I will need large file support so FAT32 is out.

Thanks

forkboy · Post by **forkboy** » Thu Feb 15, 2007 6:47 pm

Personally I'd use NTFS. I've had no problems with ntfs-3g and is seems pretty fast.

defenderBG · Post by **defenderBG** » Thu Feb 15, 2007 8:08 pm

i use ext3 with Ext2 IFS and am currently quite happy with its overall performance. So I would vote for it. As far as I know there are (were some years at least) quite a lot of problems with ntfs support and in my kernel (2.6.18-r3) ntfs write support is enabled and said to be expermental, but have never tested it though :/

Dieter@be · Post by **Dieter@be** » Thu Feb 15, 2007 8:11 pm

i really like the ext driver for windows, i wouldn't doubt

DeathCarrot · Post by **DeathCarrot** » Thu Feb 15, 2007 8:26 pm

I guess ext2/3 would also be better from the permissions side in linux. Any suggestions on whether to use Ext2 IFS or Ext2fsd?

Interimo · Post by **Interimo** » Thu Feb 15, 2007 10:54 pm

I use the IFS Driver and the only problem I've encountered was sometimes, Windows wants to format the drive (actually happening right now

). Otherwise, it's pretty nice.

irgu · Post by **irgu** » Thu Feb 15, 2007 11:36 pm

defenderBG wrote:As far as I know there are (were some years at least) quite a lot of problems with ntfs support and in my kernel (2.6.18-r3) ntfs write support is enabled and said to be expermental, but have never tested it though :/

ntfs-3g is a new, very stable read/write NTFS driver. Currently its status became release candidate because too many people complained why it's still beta when it works perfectly during heavy usage for many months

DeathCarrot · Post by **DeathCarrot** » Thu Feb 15, 2007 11:55 pm

Interimo wrote:I use the IFS Driver and the only problem I've encountered was sometimes, Windows wants to format the drive (actually happening right now ). Otherwise, it's pretty nice.

That happens to me when I don't unmount the partition cleanly in linux (i.e. go straight from a hard crash to windows).

So, sounds like both ways would work well enough, I think I may just split it 50/50, so on 1 disk I have 100GB for boot/swap/root and 400GB Ext3 for home, music, and misc downloads and all that.. and on the other disk I have 100GB NTFS for XP and 400GB NTFS for more windows related junk

Naib · Post by **Naib** » Fri Feb 16, 2007 12:13 am

I don't like the idea of two different OS's messing with their counter system when the drivers (however stable they are) still can corrupt the other
I personally have a file server as well as RO-access between the two different OS/FS

DeathCarrot · Post by **DeathCarrot** » Fri Feb 16, 2007 2:15 am

Well, I plan to incrementally backup my most important files (uni work for example) daily onto my current desktop which will be converted into an ssh/ftp/svn/smb server, so for me the convenience and speed of the approach are the more important factors.. Although I guess if I do end up losing a partition because of this I may change my mind

Btw, anyone know if it's feasible to get this kind of a setup working through RAID-0 (i.e. the whole OS interoperability thing)? Will be running ICH8R SATA RAID "Intel Matrix Storage" on Asus P5B Deluxe.
I've never had experience with any form of RAID before, this would be a task for dmraid right? Would I still get similar performance boosts as on the windows side?