NTFS or ext3 for data drive to be used in ubuntu/xp system

Alex_L

Alex_L

Alex_L

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Having dabbled with ubuntu and suse over the last few months, I fancy giving linux a go as more than just something to play with.

I'll continue dual-booting for the moment. However, now that I'll be using ubuntu or suse day to day I'll want access to my music/videos that I currently have on an external Western digital my book pro drive. Its currently formatted as NTFS. The question is do I try and use NTFS read/write in linux or reformat as ext3 assuming the drive supports it (i'm not sure?) and use something like:

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

I know when I first started trying ubuntu that NTFS read/write was pretty sketchy and experimental, how much has changed in the last few months?

How reliable is adding support for reading ext3 partitions in windows xp?
 
Pretty sure the installer won't let you install to ntfs (Never tried). However read/write support is fine for normal stuff (non root mount). You are best off just partitioning your disk up, installing to ext3, and mounting your ntfs partition if you want to copy data there.

There are tools to view/get files from an ext3 partition in windows, never tried the above link.
 
Sorry, I wasn't very clear in explaining what I wanted advice on (apologies). I won't be trying to install linux onto an ntfs drive. The NTFS external drive is purely a data drive. I'm just wondering whether its feasible to use the NTFS external drive in linux (both reading and writing), or would I be better formatting it to ext3 and getting windows to access the ext3 file system using somethign like the link I posted.

sorry for the confusion.
 
I would like to know too, have loads of data on NTFS drives, but Linux install drive will be formatted to EXT3. But need to read/write NTFS until those can be formatted to EXT3 also.
 
I know its crap but my 120gb data drive is fat32 :p

I would go with EXT3 over NTFS, as at least the former is open sorced and you can easily source stable windows drivers.
 
Yeah its fine these days, its been tagged as experimental for about 10 years hehe. ntfs-fuse is what you want to be using. Still if you got the choice you are better with ext3.
 
Ubuntu can read fine form an internal NTFS drive as long as it is mounted. not sure about an external one though
If you have a search around on here im sure there is a link to ext3 drivers for windows. i've installed them and they work fine
 
EirePlane said:
Ubuntu can read fine form an internal NTFS drive as long as it is mounted. not sure about an external one though
Click to expand...
It's not particularly relevant to this thread but UNIX-like systems don't really care if a drive is internal or external. They just mount they as part of the filesystem tree, no matter how they interface with the hardware.
 
Thanks for the help guys. Sounds like NTFS read/write has really matured over the last few months.

Think I'll give it a go leaving it formatted as NTFS for the moment and see how it goes. Just can't face reloading 300gbs of data from DVD at the moment.
 
I'm having major problems mounting and accessing my other hard drives :rolleyes: They're mounted as "\" but that appears to same as the boot drive. So can't change them because \ is in use.
 
Hate said:
you're mounting your harddrives in "\" ?

not a good idea
Click to expand...

No I labelled them something, then appeares as \ but after a restart I could change them. Managed to get the 60GB and can browse, but formatted back to FAT, will be going back to MC.

I think once Linux is configured it's fine, but install and drivers is a pain in the ****.
 
im a complete linux newbie and have the same issue of having an ntfs formatted hard drive containing data only (e.g. no o/s). do i:

1) leave the hard drive as ntfs and install ntfs-3g (or ntfs-fuse) for read/write access in ubuntu, or:
2) reformat the hard drive as ext3 and install fs-driver for read/write access in windows

please take a look at the ubuntu forums (e.g. http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=277881&highlight=ntfs+write) before you come to any conclusions.

after reading many posts on the ubuntu forums on this matter my own conclusion was not to enable read/write access in ubuntu if the data is important.

let me know how you go on. i am not sure if all the warnings on the ubuntu forums are disclaimers only, but i would cry if data was lost.
 
I dual boot Wondows XP and Ubuntu. All my data is kept on an ext3 partition, which is mounted as /home in Ubuntu. I used http://fs-driver.org to read and write to this from within Windows. I have never had any problems and find it to be completely stable. :D

I have heard that getting NTFS read/write in Linux can be a real pain and unstable. Bear in mind that I have never tried it though, so don't take that as fact.
 
I'll go with Katana on this. Since ext3 is open-source it is far easier to write a Windows driver for it than reverse-engineering an NTFS driver for Linux. If I had to share between the systems I'd use ext3 and install a driver so Windows could deal with it.
 
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