Filesystem for external disk

[jaminux]

Hi all,

Earlier I was backing up a 5.4 GB tar archive on my external hard disk formatted as fat32. At 4.0 GB the transfer suddenly terminated. Thinking it was a random bug I tried doing it again. Same result.

After I did a little googling I came up with a wikipedia page with the information on the maximum file size of filesystems... the maximum on fat32 is of course 4.0 GB (duh!).

Anyway, my question is:

What is the best filesystem to format my external hard disk to if I want to store large files and maintain Windows compatibility?

I am aware there is NTFS but I am always wary of Windows junk that does not have full Linux support. Are there any alternative filesystems?

[taurus]

NTFS is your best bet but if you want to format it to ext2/ext3, then you need to install fs-driver in windows so windows can read that harddrive.

http://www.fs-driver.org/

[jaminux]

I think it is got to be NTFS (). I won't necessarily be able to install drivers on the Windows machines I want to use the external hard disk with.

Anyway, thanks for the links on ext drivers. I will definitely install those on my Windows machine.

[taurus]

Just remember to use the safely remove hardware option in windows to unmount the drive before you unplug it.

[Vince4Amy]

Your most reliable option is NTFS. Don't worry NTFS is supported through ntfs-3g and works great out of the box in most distros.

[jaminux]

Thanks everyone...

Now I just have to transfer 36 GB off the drive then back on again.