Re: [tlug] vfat or ext2 for a shared (linux, vista) partition

[Kalin KOZHUHAROV <me.kalin@example.com>]

On Tue, Jun 8, 2010 at 09:37, Edward Middleton
<edward.middleton@example.com> wrote:
> On 06/07/2010 10:45 PM, Hector Akamine wrote:
>> I plan to replace my laptop HDD with a bigger one (500GB), and in this
>> drive I would like to create a 200-300GB partition to be shared
>> between linux and windows vista (the laptop is dual boot, with
>> separate partitions for each OS, the shared partition is only for user
>> data). I think I only have two choices for the shared partition
>> format:
>>
>> - VFAT (FAT32)
>> - ext2, using ext2 IFS (http://www.fs-driver.org/) to be able to read
>> and write from vista
>>
>> I have experience sharing VFAT USB drives between windows and linux,
>> so far without problems. Does using ext2 instead give any advantage?
>> Obviously, I would like the one that is easiest to maintain and
>> recover in case of a problem.
>
> I would use NTFS with ntfs-3g[1].
>
> Edward
>
> 1. http://www.tuxera.com/community/ntfs-3g-download/

I'll second that. ntfs-3g has been rock-solid in the last few releases
(some two years?) under linux and it is more-or-less stable under
Windoze I hear :-)

If you are trying it with very old machines (80GB ATA drives, AthlonXP
CPU...), it will be quite slower than vfat. In most cases you'll
notice speed differences only if you troll trough a hoard of small
files (e.g. replacing EXIF  timestamps in millions of JPEGs). For
day-to-day use, there should be no differences.

Cheers,
Kalin.