There have been multiple accounts created with the sole purpose of posting advertisement posts or replies containing unsolicited advertising.

Accounts which solely post advertisements, or persistently post them may be terminated.

What file systems are you using on your devices and why?

I want to learn more about file systems from the practical point of view so I know what to expect, how to approach them and what experience positive or negative you had / have.

I found this wikipedia’s comparison but I want your hands-on views.

For now my mental list is

  • NTFS - for some reason TVs on USB love these and also Windows + Linux can read and write this
  • Ext4 - solid fs with journaling but Linux specific
  • Btrfs - some modern fs with snapshot capability, Linux specific
  • xfs - servers really like these as they are performant, Linux specific
  • FAT32 - limited but recognizable everywhere
  • exFAT - like FAT32 but less recognizable and less limited
greywolf0x1 ,

dual boot NixOS and FreeBSD on a single drive, ext4 on Nix and ZFS on FreeBSD. each partition has its own boot, swap and root, all encrypted

btw, OP wrote that FAT32 is limited, isn’t it the default fs for the boot partition? can other fs like ext2/3 be used?

CatLikeLemming ,
@CatLikeLemming@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

Btrfs because it sounded cool when I first read about it and worked fine so far :3

Psyhackological OP ,
@Psyhackological@lemmy.ml avatar

Yeah it sounds “better” FS. Do you use snapshots?

CatLikeLemming ,
@CatLikeLemming@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

Yep, got Timeshift hooked up to make a snapshot each time I update my system and I can boot into them via GRUB. Haven’t needed that so far, thankfully, but it’s there just in case.

tired_n_bored ,
  • Ext4 main computer
  • NTFS for hard drives and stuff that need to be shared with other people using Windows
  • BTRFS for the NAS
Psyhackological OP ,
@Psyhackological@lemmy.ml avatar

Interesting choice for NAS, why not the others that seem like better alternatives?

tired_n_bored ,

Well, as far as I know, BTRFS and ZFS are the recommended file systems for NAS’s. They have self-healing capabilities so I can be slightly more sure that my data does not get corrupted over time.

Psyhackological OP ,
@Psyhackological@lemmy.ml avatar

Is self-healing process automated or you need to somehow enable it so it happens from time to time?

tired_n_bored ,

You have to run a so-called scrub command that checks for errors and tries to repair them. You can automate to run it every month or so

Psyhackological OP ,
@Psyhackological@lemmy.ml avatar

In a cronjob or something alike?

tired_n_bored ,

Yup

VitabytesDev ,

ext4 on everything except external drives where I put NTFS.

Psyhackological OP ,
@Psyhackological@lemmy.ml avatar

So you have a dual boot or Windows machines I’m guessing for any of these

  1. Microsoft Office
  2. Gaming
  3. Adobe
VitabytesDev ,

I don’t dual boot, I just have some other Windows machines that I use rarely for Windows-only software that require an external connection, like Odin for Samsung devices.

unn ,

Btrfs, but if I’d start from scratch today I’d go for bcachefs.

Psyhackological OP ,
@Psyhackological@lemmy.ml avatar

Even now?

unn ,

Yes

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • [email protected]
  • random
  • lifeLocal
  • goranko
  • All magazines
    •