IIRC you can format the drive in fat 32 using any partitioning tool (other than windows) and still access the file from both windows and Linux. The size limitation is only relevant when the drive is formatted from within windows.
This addresses the size issue, I think but I'm not sure about the UID/GID concerns - correct me if I'm wrong. http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/file/part.htm fat partitioning info * FAT12: The oldest type of FAT uses a 12-bit binary number to hold the cluster number. A volume formatted using FAT12 can hold a maximum of 4,086 clusters, which is 2^12 minus a few values (to allow for reserved values to be used in the FAT). FAT12 is therefore most suitable for very small volumes, and is used on floppy disks and hard disk partitions smaller than about 16 MB (the latter being rare today.) * FAT16: The FAT used for most older systems, and for small partitions on modern systems, uses a 16-bit binary number to hold cluster numbers. When you see someone refer to a "FAT" volume generically, they are usually referring to FAT16, because it is the de facto standard for hard disks, even with FAT32 now more popular than FAT16. A volume using FAT16 can hold a maximum of 65,526 clusters, which is 2^16 less a few values (again for reserved values in the FAT). FAT16 is used for hard disk volumes ranging in size from 16 MB to 2,048 MB. VFAT is a variant of FAT16. * FAT32: The newest FAT type, FAT32 is supported by newer versions of Windows, including Windows 95's OEM SR2 release, as well as Windows 98, Windows ME and Windows 2000. FAT32 uses a 28-bit binary cluster number--not 32, because 4 of the 32 bits are "reserved". 28 bits is still enough to permit ridiculously huge volumes--FAT32 can theoretically handle volumes with over 268 million clusters, and will support (theoretically) drives up to 2 TB in size. However to do this the size of the FAT grows very large. Cheers, Dave Watkins -----Original Message----- From: simon [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, March 29, 2006 6:15 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; CLUG General Subject: Re: [clug-talk] What FS type for 80GB USB drive Hi Roy, Did you try UDF yet? The mount MAN page claims it supports '-o uid/gid', but my limited testing seems to show they don't work :-(. But I also found this page, with a kernel patch to do exactly enable the missing functionality. http://lkml.org/lkml/2006/3/5/171 >From the wikipedia, XP should have UDF read support natively. Writing can apparently be added with drivers..... Simon On Wed, Mar 29, 2006 at 08:51:00AM -0700, Roy Souther wrote: > I need my system to be able to let uses read and write to USB drives and > memory devices when they plug them into their local station. When a user > inserts a USB device I have the system locate the user ID by the owner > of the DISPLAY session. The device is then mounted in their home > directory. For USB memory sticks I use the UID and GID so that all > entries on the device are owned by them and they have full rights. This > works great for small USB memory sticks that come pre-formated as vfat > because vfat supports the UID and GID options. > > New problem. Someone wants to plug in an 80GB external USB drive. The > drive came as NTFS. Linux cannot write to NTFS in any way that a Windows > system could read the data back. Vfat does not support partitions larger > then 32GB and ext2 & 3 do not support UID or GID so the system is owned > by root. > > I would like some way to make the mounted 80GB drive ext2 or ext3 and > owned by the user that inserted the device just the same way I do with > small USB memory sticks. I cannot figure out any way to do that. > Everything I have tried has failed and only root can write to the drive. > > Linux has an NTFS DLL wrapper that will use the Windows DLL's to write > to the drive so that Windows can read them but I don't think I am > allowed to distribute those DLL's. I really need an unencumbered > solution. > > So I am looking at all the different FS types that Linux supports, there > are a lot. Can you give me your input on what FS to use? Do any FS types > support large size and UID/GID that both Linux and Windows can read? > > > Royce Souther > www.SiliconTao.com > Let Open Source help your business move beyond. > > For security this message is digitally authenticated by GnuPG. > > > > _______________________________________________ > clug-talk mailing list > [email protected] > http://clug.ca/mailman/listinfo/clug-talk_clug.ca > Mailing List Guidelines (http://clug.ca/ml_guidelines.php) > **Please remove these lines when replying _______________________________________________ clug-talk mailing list [email protected] http://clug.ca/mailman/listinfo/clug-talk_clug.ca Mailing List Guidelines (http://clug.ca/ml_guidelines.php) **Please remove these lines when replying _______________________________________________ clug-talk mailing list [email protected] http://clug.ca/mailman/listinfo/clug-talk_clug.ca Mailing List Guidelines (http://clug.ca/ml_guidelines.php) **Please remove these lines when replying
