mccFeb 28

Are Western Digital drives trustworthy these days. If I want to buy a pretty big non-flash hard drive for "backup and throw in a drawer" purposes, is this a good choice

https://www.amazon.ca/Elements-Portable-External-Drive-WDBU6Y0050BBK-WESN/dp/B07X41PWTY

Amazon.ca

Show threadmccMar 1

ME: I want a 5 TB hard drive

Amazon: We can do that

Canada Computers: I can give you 12 TB for twice the price

Christine: Wait, Canada Computers has 12 TB drives for *how* much? Get two

Me, walking back from yonge-dundas square the next morning, absolutely twisted, carrying 24 TB of platter drives:

Show threadmccMar 1

Hey if I want to format an HD for archival purposes, and I want it to be accessible from both Windows* and Linux** without problems, do I use… exfat? Will exfat freak out if I format it at absurdly high sizes like 12 TB, or give me an annoyingly high "minimum file size" or something? Are there any more-reliable/journaled FSes that both these OSes are happy with?

* 10
** Let's say Debian Trixie

Show threadmcc

Okay but seriously: Should I NTFS? People are saying the Linux NTFS driver is "pretty good" "perfectly adequate" is "adequate" what I'm looking for with my backup HD

https://toot.dusepo.co.uk/@Foritus/116155362354958361

Charlotte (@[email protected])

@[email protected] chaos option: ntfs as the Linux ntfs driver is pretty good these days.

Trunkington Farms
Mar 1 at 6:54pmWeb
Show threadнабMar 1
@mcc i'm surprised to see that sid no longer marks all NTFS drivers as broken and in fact ships a ntfs3.ko, but even the FUSE ntfs-3g implementation has been generally understood as good enough at least for reading for a long time, and windows unfortunately forces your hand here
Show threadElladanMar 1

@nabijaczleweli @mcc there are two NTFS implementations, ntfs-3g and ntfs-plus. Plus is faster and considered more modern, but iirc at least one Linux distro still prefers 3g because they consider plus buggy.

Regardless, my understanding is that neither of them actually support basic features like the journal, so I wouldn't trust them for anything important personally. That said they might not be worse than exfat, just very very complicated in comparison.

Show threadMakiki🐑Mar 1
@mcc It won't explode the filesystem if that's what's you are worried about - and you don't really have any better option for a filesystem accessible directly from both windows and linux (exFAT will explode on the first unlucky powerfail you'll get).
Show threadUrjaMar 1

@mcc

I suppose NTFS will work.

(Personally I'm so old hat and linux-focused that i'd use ext4 and there's software out there that can copy files out of ext4 partitions on windows in a pinch...)

But also for a fun suggestion that I'm not sure I'd be serious about (have not tested it myself), but ... WinBTRFS is a thing, so if you want a super modern filesystem, there you go (i'm still scared of btrfs).

(ReactOS folks have booted their whole OS off of btrfs i hear.. that's wild.)

Show threadmegaMar 1
@mcc ntfs-3g Is pretty good. I've even used some of their additional tooling to rescue data from a dead disk (had lots of dead blocks)
Show thread「LICORICE-BEAK BASTARD」Mar 1
@mcc fwiw, my drives are NTFS-formatted and I've had no issues accessing my files from any of them between windows and a few different linux distros.
Show threadCat!Mar 1

@mcc I've had some issues with NTFS, mostly if my computer crashes, I need to boot into Windows and do chkdsk /f on them to repair them. Other than that it works mostly fine.

Steam on Linux does not seem to like NTFS (I've had a couple of games work on NTFS but loads more not) but if it's just for archival I guess that won't be an issue?

Show threadmccMar 1
@Catriona based on what people are saying I'm leaning toward mounting the NTFS partition read-only from linux and if I want to modify it on linux, making a copy.
Show threadflammableengineeringMar 1
What do you mean by archival purposes? I ask because I wouldn’t recommend NTFS or any other filesystem without checksums for what I consider archival purposes, which is long term storage prioritizing data integrity. If it doesn’t have checksums, it isn’t able to detect bit rot, only damage to the file system data structure. Unfortunately, I don’t think there are any file systems with checksum support that are supported on both windows and Unix-like systems, with the sort of exception of the zfs-win project that lets you read (but not write) ZFS volumes on windows. ZFS and BTRFS are your options for Linux, and ReFS is something windows supports that I’ve never tried.
Show threadmccMar 1
@flammableengineering @Catriona "I'ma copy a bunch of files to it and then put it in a drawer and in six years go 'hey where were those files?'"
Show threadZimmieMar 1
@mcc Honestly, if you need more than “perfectly adequate”, you should use ZFS or Btrfs. They have serious data durability features. Stick the drives into a NAS or some other kind of storage server, have that handle the ZFS or Btrfs, and have Windows, Linux, Android, and whatever else access the storage over SMB.
Show threadferunandoMar 1
@mcc the only issues I've had with NTFS is that my distro keeps asking for my password to mount the drive --fixable, but not friction enough to bother me to go for it yet-- and the fact that all files are seen as executable. both feel like non-issues if your use case is backup...?
Show thread⊥ᵒᵚ Cᵸᵎᶺᵋᶫ∸ᵒᵘ ☑️Mar 1
@mcc no. Either use exfat or ext4. Super stable, no real gotchas, will mount easily in future.
Rsync / zfs send / tar to it based on your whim, preference and unsaid requirements
Show thread🇺🇦 haxadecimal 🚫👑Mar 1
@mcc
good enough for interoperability with Windows when you need it
not terribly good native Linux performance, though - definitely slower than ext4 or ZFS
Show threadBloognooMar 1
@mcc
I've spent so long struggling with it being slow and awful I can't be arsed with it now even *if* if has improved.
I tried exfat for a while but window's support is absolute crap, so that entire format is a waste of time.
I'm running btrfs on live drives and ext4 on storage drives. If Btrfs fuck up kernel submissions again I'm back to ext4 everywhere.
If I *have* to get data on Windows I'll use one of my crappy old small usb keys with fat32 and split archives that come close to the 4Gb limit
Show threadpoleguy looking for lost toolsMar 1

@mcc I did NTFS for similar reasons and regretted it. I think it was similar to other comments here. Like no chkdsk under Linux. yuck.

I went to ext4. Still do. To read it under windows I ended up settling in just spinning up a tiny Linux VM... That was rare for me though.

Be sure you label it ext4 with Sharpie so you don't think it is blank and format it under windows. :-)

Show threadGourdMar 1
@mcc from my experience: The NTFS drivers have been good for day to day usage, but they have bad performance compared to even the exFAT driver, can't handle some errors that I just gave up and used Windows CHKDSK in a VM for, and can also end up with some weird fragmentation issues if the drive nearly maxes out on capacity that murder performance.
Show threadGourdMar 1
@mcc I haven't had any issues with exFAT so far, but I've used it less.
Show threadKeytar WolfMar 2
@mcc yes it is pretty good. Been using it for 10+ years with no problem on my main PC because I used to dual boot Linux and Windows. Haven't booted Windows in years but am still using NTFS 'cause I'm too lazy to change it.