NTFS or FAT file system?

[Nothinman]

In ext3 both the metadata and data is logged

It's possible to do that, but the default is data=ordered.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

Imagine what would happen to your data, if your RAM suffered a parity/ECC failure. Even with the power still running, your filesystem could be hosed, due to a BSOD. Not with Reiser4 though.

Huh? If the data got corrupted in memory and you didn't have the hardware to detect it, how would reiser4 fix that? It won't, it'll just make sure the corrupted data is on disk in a single transaction.

I was pointing out that unexpected power-loss was not the only possible incident that could lead to "sudden hardware death", and that providing a UPS wouldn't mitigate "SHD" due to a detected memory error, which normally signals an NMI and halts the system, at least on a PC. (Real servers support chipkill and VM page-level app-killing, among other things, but that's outside the scope of this discussion.)

Obviously you would have to have hardware support for detecting RAM errors, and obviously choice of disk filesystem could never mitigate RAM errors happening. However, since the state of the filesystem on-disk, is *never* in an inconsistent state, then you can destroy/interrupt the rest of the computer's hardware with impunity, without incurring filesystem corruption. (Assuming that the physical drive isn't destroyed in the process, of course.)

 

[Nothinman]

However, since the state of the filesystem on-disk, is *never* in an inconsistent state, then you can destroy/interrupt the rest of the computer's hardware with impunity, without incurring filesystem corruption. (Assuming that the physical drive isn't destroyed in the process, of course.)

But that's irrelevant because if there is other hardware problems that can't be detected you can have corruption sneek in from any number of sources and no filesystem will save you, not even grand reiser4.

And there a ton of scenarios that can lead to data corruption, imagine an app that calls write() 10 times with 5K buffers to write out 50K. Sure it's not terribly smart, but it's legal and could leave to corrupt data if the entire transaction of all 10 seperate syscalls fails in the middle.

 

[drag]

Fat32 with proper backups is more desireable then ReiserFSv4.

In computer land backups are next to godliness.

Backup > Atomic File system
Backup > Full data journalling
Backup > UPS
Backup > Raid 5

All this technology is great at improving uptime and increasing performance and efficiency, but backups are the only thing that can save you if you run into a real problem.

Oh, ya. Fat32 sucks the big one. Use NTFS, avoid Fat32 like the plague.

 

[Nothinman]

Fat32 with proper backups is more desireable then ReiserFSv4.

IMO anything with or without backups is more desireable than any release of reiserfs.

 

[JEDI]

i use fat32 because my bootdisk can't read ntfs.

i'm afraid that one day winxp crashes, and i can't get to my files.

is there a bootup from floppy for ntfs? if so, link?

 

[Nothinman]

Why use floppies? Get a copy of Bart's PE Builder and make a XP rescue CD.

 

[MrChad]

Originally posted by: Nothinman
Why use floppies? Get a copy of Bart's PE Builder and make a XP rescue CD.

:thumbsup:

 

[kylef]

Originally posted by: JEDI
i use fat32 because my bootdisk can't read ntfs.

i'm afraid that one day winxp crashes, and i can't get to my files.

is there a bootup from floppy for ntfs? if so, link?

Use the recovery console, or as others have pointed out, some customized WinPE-based solution.

You're giving up file system security by using fat32. Running as non-admin using Fat32 gives you no security whatsoever.

 

[kEnToNjErOmE]

Originally posted by: Blain
I've heard of people even formatting with FAT16 for working with very large files (audio).

FAT32 has a 4 gig limitation on file size. I only use Windows because I am forced to becuase of video games. On my game machine I use FAT32 because it is faster and does have less overhead. My server is Linux I am using ext3 at the moment. I'll see how it works out.

 

[MrChad]

Originally posted by: kEnToNjErOmE

Originally posted by: Blain
I've heard of people even formatting with FAT16 for working with very large files (audio).

FAT32 has a 4 gig limitation on file size. I only use Windows because I am forced to becuase of video games. On my game machine I use FAT32 because it is faster and does have less overhead. My server is Linux I am using ext3 at the moment. I'll see how it works out.

NTFS should be faster than FAT32 for most large hard drives.

 

[kEnToNjErOmE]

Originally posted by: MrChad

Originally posted by: kEnToNjErOmE

Originally posted by: Blain
I've heard of people even formatting with FAT16 for working with very large files (audio).

FAT32 has a 4 gig limitation on file size. I only use Windows because I am forced to becuase of video games. On my game machine I use FAT32 because it is faster and does have less overhead. My server is Linux I am using ext3 at the moment. I'll see how it works out.

NTFS should be faster than FAT32 for most large hard drives.

My partitions are no larger than 30 gigs.

 

[spyordie007]

My partitions are no larger than 30 gigs.

If it's got a windows install on it than it has enough files to wash any advantage FAT would give you. I'm guessing NTFS would still be faster in most real-world applications.

 

[phantom404]

NTFS All the way.... Only thing i had to use FAT32 for is for Boot Magic, and i used partitian magic to create the 200 meg partitian.

 

[DouglasAdams]

Linux Virgin needs real easy 101

i want to convert one of my machines to Linux (Mandrake 10.1 looks favourite atm) for a number of reasons, viz:

1)
see what this Linux thing is all about (i've booted a couple of "Live's" and i really like the look of it)

2)
use the machine as a file store (4 ides + 1 sata)

3)
try to start kicking my M$ habit

4)
show my kids that there is any alternative to the dark side

5)
for less crashes / hangs / needing to reboot / etc

Questions:
i've read what you've said about ntfs and fat32 but, from what i understood, that's for M$ systems.

a)
which file system would be best to use for this Linux machine?
(i would want the data on this machine to be available to the other machines on my network)

b)
i've always loaded windoze to a small partition; the pagefile (and other temp files) on a second small partition with all my data on a large (remaining space) partition (on a single drive system). in this way i can reformat whenever windoze goes tits up and my data is still intact.
is this same logic still valid for Linux??
(yes, i know Linux never goes wrong but ...)

c)
is there anything else i should be asking?

please be gentle with me

 

[spyordie007]

Linux Virgin needs real easy 101

i want to convert one of my machines to Linux (Mandrake 10.1 looks favourite atm) for a number of reasons, viz:

1)
see what this Linux thing is all about (i've booted a couple of "Live's" and i really like the look of it)

Cool go for it; you might also want to try Fedora

3)
try to start kicking my M$ habit

Suggestion: Just say Microsoft, you'll get a lot more respect from everyone if you use proper names.

4)
show my kids that there is any alternative to the dark side

Same logic as above; it's not the "dark side" it's just the most commonly used OS.

5)
for less crashes / hangs / needing to reboot / etc

You'll find plenty that will argue both ways; however as a rule of thumb the current versions of windows are no less stable or less secure than the current versions of Linux. The *most* important (and often overlooked) factor is how good of a job the admin/operator does setting up and securing the machine. Whatever time you spent setting up and securing your Windows system(s) expect to spend at least as much (and likely more) on your Linux system(s).

Questions:
i've read what you've said about ntfs and fat32 but, from what i understood, that's for M$ systems.

Generally speaking that's correct; with a Linux install you would want to use a differant FS.

a)
which file system would be best to use for this Linux machine?
(i would want the data on this machine to be available to the other machines on my network)

Making it available to other computers on your network is not a fuction of the file system but rather a function of the OS. As such it's likely not going to matter much for you.

b)
i've always loaded windoze to a small partition; the pagefile (and other temp files) on a second small partition with all my data on a large (remaining space) partition (on a single drive system). in this way i can reformat whenever windoze goes tits up and my data is still intact.
is this same logic still valid for Linux??
(yes, i know Linux never goes wrong but ...)

See above posts. Yes it's pretty common to use differant partions for your system and files so that the partitions could be formatted/etc. if need be. Linux does go wrong, it's up to you to keep it from doing otherwise.

c)
is there anything else i should be asking?

If you have further questions create a new thread where they can be addressed directly (this thread is about a differant topic alltogether). Also it really helps to be less cynical when asking questions; just ask your question(s) and be specific on the topic at hand.

please be gentle with me

I hope you dont think I'm trying to do otherwise. I think it's in your best interest to try all your available options and than to make an educated and practical desision about *what* to run.

Good Luck,

-Erik

 

[ReiAyanami]

how much slower is NTFS compared to FAT32? when running 10 simultaneous bittorrents, my seagate barracuda NTFS will lock up at speeds above 200k down + 40 up, while my fat32 never has that problem. it also takes a whole lot longer to search files and even display folders on NTFS

 

[Nothinman]

how much slower is NTFS compared to FAT32?

Generally it should be faster, there is a little additional overhead for things like the security checks but that's about it.

when running 10 simultaneous bittorrents, my seagate barracuda NTFS will lock up at speeds above 200k down + 40 up

Most likely that's a drive limitation, 10 torrents doing 2M/s write and 400K/s up will tax just about any drive out there.

while my fat32 never has that problem

"Your" FAT32? I assume you meant another drive in your system and if so it's irrelevant unless you did the filesystem comparison on the same drive. There are any number of factors that could make the other drive faster regardless of filesystem.

it also takes a whole lot longer to search files and even display folders on NTFS

I searched my entire system drive at work today in about 10s and it's NTFS, again your bottleneck is probably somewhere else.

 

[spyordie007]

it also takes a whole lot longer to search files and even display folders on NTFS

I searched my entire system drive at work today in about 10s and it's NTFS, again your bottleneck is probably somewhere else.

I agree; doing heavy drive I/O operations are going to depend much more on the hardware than what file system you're using.

 

[kEnToNjErOmE]

Originally posted by: spyordie007

My partitions are no larger than 30 gigs.

If it's got a windows install on it than it has enough files to wash any advantage FAT would give you. I'm guessing NTFS would still be faster in most real-world applications.

Check out this test.
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articl.../display/wd2500sd.html

 

[spyordie007]

Originally posted by: kEnToNjErOmE
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articl.../display/wd2500sd.html

Yes I see what you're getting at. Buried in the article there are a couple of benchmarks that have higher (in some cases significant) performance listed when using FAT32.

However; this is not a NTFS vs. FAT32 article. It's an article and a number of benchmarks designed to test two very similar WD 250GB drives. The reason they did the tests under both FAT32 and NTFS was so they could establish that the WD2500SD was faster than the WD2500PD regardless of what file system was used.

Using the article to establish a significant speed difference between NTFS and FAT has some MAJOR fallacies:
[*]It assumes drives are empty. We don?t know for sure (as the article does not state either way) but we are left to assume that the drives are a single empty 250GB partition (else they would have mentioned file fragmentation and differences in speed when comparing the front and end of the drives). In the real world you've got an OS install, file fragmentation to contend with, etc. etc.
[*]Cluster size. Now assuming NTFS and FAT partitions are both the same size it?s quite likely that the NTFS cluster size is less than the FAT cluster size (more information on default cluster sizes). Therefore when performing the tests on NTFS the drive is responsible for reading a whole lot more clusters. Back in the FAT32 vs. FAT16 days I remember having people claim that FAT16 *was faster* on same-size drives due to whatever various benchmarks they had performed; however what they forgot was that the difference was due to the greater number of clusters on the FAT32 drive.

I'll bet if those benchmarks were performed in real-world scenarios (the drives had OS installs on them giving the FS thousands of files to keep track of) with identical cluster sizes than the numbers would be much closer.

Fact of the matter is performance is tied very much to the hardware used. The extra features in NTFS does add a little additional overhead however it is not significant; it is also negated by the fact that the NTFS MFT is more efficient at handling large numbers of files than FAT's FAT and this will show as you have larger volumes with larger numbers of files. FAT also has a tendency to get badly fragmented much quicker than NTFS and this can lead to a noticeably different speed when accessing files.

Using this article?s benchmarks to compare file systems is like using an Ati vs. Nvidia benchmark that happens to use both Windows and Linux to run Quake as a means to compare speeds between the two OSes. It is, in a word ?worthless?

 

[Nothinman]

(off the top of my head I believe that the default NTFS cluster size is 512b whereas the default FAT32 cluster size is 4k)

The default for NTFS is also 4K. You only get 512b clusters if you use a pre-XP version of convert to convert a FAT drive to NTFS. And the cluster size for FAT varies depending on the filesystem size, it's 4K up to 32G I believe and then it jumps to 8K and larger up to either 32K or 64K, I can't remember which is the max, as the filesystem gets bigger. MS has the numbers in a KB article.

 

[spyordie007]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

(off the top of my head I believe that the default NTFS cluster size is 512b whereas the default FAT32 cluster size is 4k)

The default for NTFS is also 4K. You only get 512b clusters if you use a pre-XP version of convert to convert a FAT drive to NTFS. And the cluster size for FAT varies depending on the filesystem size, it's 4K up to 32G I believe and then it jumps to 8K and larger up to either 32K or 64K, I can't remember which is the max, as the filesystem gets bigger. MS has the numbers in a KB article.

yeah I looked it up after the fact & linked the article. My point was that 4k vs. 64k cluster sizes is going to give you a signifigant differance in performance.

 

[Philippine Mango]

Bah, after my NTFS partition gettting corrupted on my machines and having to spend days trying to recover files using the program PC File Recovery (didn't recover all anyways) I'm done with NTFS. One day the partition got horribly corrupt, didnt even know it happened until Windows refused to boot. This happened on two machines that had NTFS partitions. It was very strange because when I was working on the first NTFS drive that crashed and when I was done fixing it (reinstalled everything etc..) the drive (computer) I was working on to do the proceedure also became corrupt. So then I had to do the exact thing but on the opposite machine. It was even more difficult because the 2nd machine's drives were much bigger than the 1st machine's drives. It was a real nightmare, the only time I will ever use NTFS agian is for: 1. An experimental machine where I'm going to screw around with it. 2. A domain client machine 3. Very paranoid and need extreme security for files I dont care about (which totally defeats the purpose of it).

 

[naddicott]

I always format my non-boot drive as NTFS with 64k clusters. I have space to spare so the waste is inconsequential, and I definitely find myself needing to defrag less often. Whether there's a speed difference is hard to tell, but I like to tell myself there is.

I wouldn't use anything other than NTFS for a boot partition due to journaling. Don't mess with encryption unless you really have a need for it (and if you do, please refer to the sticky in this forum).