Re: writable file system for windows

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Date: Wed, 1 Dec 2004 13:49:32 +0100 (CET)
To: <kdk@daleco.biz>

Hi both!

The story about ext2fs was a joke, sorry for that. I read recently about
its support under Windows and found it interesting. But using this for
data exchange in your case would be a nightmare (hence the smilie).

Seriously, FAT32 is the safest bet in general as long as Microsoft
does not patent it (they seem to be in the process of having the patent
revoked). FAT32 is the first file system supported on basically any OS
(*BSD, Linux, BeOS, SkyOS, etc.) I heard about an update coming from
Apple (the Darwin project) which supports partitions beyond 8 or 16GB
(I don't remember exactly what was the old limitation) so partitions
of more than 100GB should be fine. Anyway, try mkfs with the side you
need and you will see what happens (yes, I really mean to create the
partition under FreeBSD, not Windows - this way you're sure you can
use it for your purpose).

I would not recommend FAT16 as they are limited in size. And you don't
really find disks of this format any more around. FAT12 should be
limited to floppy disks.

Writable NTFS is dangerous mostly because of the compressed files and
directories - M$ did not publish the algorithms so you risk loosing
your data and overwriting sectors that have been already assigned.
M$ tend to make some slight changes with every OS so they manipulate
the specs as they want. The NTFS specs are not public - the FreeBSD
implementation is a reverse-engineering work.

Hope it helps
  Olivier

> Kevin Smith wrote:
>
>> Hi-- My question is really directed at which type of file system I
>> should
>> choose for the shared area (bsd/windows) when I do the partitioning,
>> rather than access. I seem to be able to mount NTFS partitions and
>> read them, but my understanding is that they are unsafe to write to
>> from bsd. At least on Linux this is the case. I want to be able to
>> write
>> files from bsd and read them in windows. The ext2fs system seems like
>> one way, but I was hoping that I could use a native windows/dos file
>> system
>> that would not require any special mounting on the windows side.
>>
>> -K
>>
>>
>> Olivier Gautherot wrote:
>>
>>> If you have no restrictions regarding ACL, this is the quickest way
>>> to do so.
>>>
>>> You can also create an ext2fs file system, that can be mounted
>>> read-only under Windows using Cygwin ;-)
>>>
>>> Cheers
>>> Olivier
>>
>
> Kevin,
>
> I don't *think*, (but am having a little trouble verifying) that
> mount_msdosfs(8) will have any trouble with FAT 32; I know
> I've read 'em; can't remember whether I had to write 'em or
> not (I stick 'em in a FBSD box to backup before "flattening"
> winboxen). I am sure FAT (FAT16?) would be OK. Maybe
> Olivier or someone else can say.
>
> [ BTW, I think he was simply giving options, not suggesting
> that ext2fs would be the best way. ]
>
> I did a small bit of perusal of the CVS commit logs and
> the source for the mount utilities in question, but it's a
> good bit over my head --- I can't determine (other than
> reading the manpage) exactly how dangerous it would be,
> (heck, I've not even figured out exactly how they do it *at all*)
> but I agree that it seems risky to try it with NTFS based
> on what we can see. Is there any way to try it as FAT32?
> Like I said, I'm *pretty* sure I've done this often.
>
> Kevin Kinsey

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