[clug-talk] File Systems

[Shawn Grover]

I once had formatted my drive to be ext3, but forgot to make sure the 
ext3 support was in the kernel (back in my Gentoo days).  The net result 
was that my drive was treated as EXT2.  And this bit me in the butt.

I forget whether it was a power bump, or I had hit the power manually, 
but when I tried to power up, the drive would NOT come up.  Because it 
was behaving as an EXT2, there was no journaling, and the partition 
became corrupted.  I later recovered my data with doing a DD of the 
drive to a file, but in the short term my drive was non-functional.  I 
couldn't get it into a state where I could run the usual repair programs.

Lessen learned - make sure EXT3 support is in the kernel when using EXT3 
partitions.  But also learned that EXT2 drives could become unusable 
after an interruption like that.

As for using EXT3 on a drive for Windows access - if you install the 
driver mentioned in a previous post Windows can access ext3.  I've done 
this but found it problematic - now EVERY windows box that needs to 
access the drive needs that driver, and this became a problem.  (random 
laptops needing access to data on the drive, etc.)  So now I just stick 
with FAT32 for "common" drives.

Shawn

John Jardine wrote:
> Hi Alex,
> 
> There is a significant chance that ext2 will be out of sync - but it's
> not like it's guaranteed to fail.  
> 
> I haven't played here for awhile but ...
> Dirty file-system buffers are flushed every 30 seconds by pdflush (by
> default).  Therefore what you stand to lose is the data between the last
> flush and a crash.
> 
> The Linux Programmer's Toolbox, p281, talks to this a bit.  There are
> probably other better sources.
> 
> YMMV,
> J.J.
> 
> 
> On Sun, 2009-01-18 at 00:54 -0700, Alex wrote:
>> Hey, all i am looking for some advice, i use my Macbook pro as my
>> primary laptop and would like to have an external drive that is
>> Read/Writable by OSX/Linux/Windows any suggestions?.. i'm looking for
>> something better then FAT32 but i think im asking for to much
>> already..
>>
>> it would be nice if Apple and Microsoft would agree apon a open source
>> standard file system for 3rd party drives.. i hate using FAT on any
>> thing over 100gb
>>
>> Also can any one clear up some misconceptions i might have on EXT2..
>> i heard if you are using EXT2 and the power goes.. that there is a
>> GOOD chance the partition of the drive would be corrupted..
>> is this true? is it really more volitile then FAT?
>>
>> one of the reasons i ask is there is a EXT2 kernel mod for OSX so i
>> COULD use an ext2 filesystem on my external hardrives.. 
>>
>> Also i have been thinking of investing into a NAS to solve alot of
>> these delema's granted its not as portable, but if i could find a NAS
>> that supports USB drives with ext3 this would solve ALOT of my
>> problems...
>>
>> suggestions?
>>
>> Thanks!
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