Folks; first off, thanks a bunch for your thoughts on that. To add to this, I will initially give a short outline on the use case that comes to my mind. Situation:
(a) I have a bunch of computers (notebook, netbook, desktop pc) of my own, and I want to have means to have all data kept on a portable (for netbook/notebook), external system easily accessible to all of these devices. (b) If I am intended to share data with someone knowing what platform (s)he uses and, thus, what kind of file system is best choice there, I will surely (agree with Nathan here) prepare things accordingly. However, this isn't what makes up the problem. As I carry my external storage with me most of the time, it once in a while happens (say, while attending a Java User Group wanting to show something, or being at a Linux Install Party wanting to quickly demonstrate an OpenSolaris VM to someone who, running still Windows and VirtualBox in that, is unsure whether to install Linux or OpenSolaris, or even just showing off things to a fellow developer running Windows) that I want to share data with someone having (1) a platform I didn't know about in advance and (2) a host on which installing too many drivers or tools is difficult if not impossible. (c) Talking about large sets of data and the external drive basically both being a "data storage/vault" and a collection of data taken off different hosts, the option of reformatting the drive always ends up in a vast load of data having to be copied around, which at the very least is time consuming and, thus, not something you want to do every day. Insights out of this, initially: - For (a), using ZFS is fine because all machines involved (Linux, OpenSolaris) offer read/write support at acceptable stability. However, this is not a choice for (b) as ZFS atop Windows is impossible so far. - (b) could as well be achieved by splitting up the large drive into two partitions, to be sure having at least one partition readable to any system that might be involved. Result, of course: It's always about copying files around, and in the end, the files required are sure as h**l on the "wrong" partition. - (c), on the other hand, discourages messing around with the on-disk file system too often but asks for having a "stable" fs installed once and then filling this with files. - At the moment, I use ext3 file system, along with a small FAT partition that comes with a "standalone" ext3 browser for win32 systems; though this is particularly clumsy, it at least works. Now if I only had seamless ext3 support in OpenSolaris... :) > Volker A. Brandt wrote: >> Why do you need a file system? Do you want to use the files in place >> on the USB drive? Otherwise you could just tar onto the block device >> for the USB drive. You could experiment with the tar block size to >> speed up transfer. - Considered (s)tar as well, before, but in the end neither (a) nor (b) work with this approach - at the very least while dealing with the Netbook and a limited SSD storage capacity _and_ a processor not that fast, dealing with large (s)tar archives doesn't seem to be what one wants... :) >> If you do need tu have a file system, have you tried UDF? - Thought about this, too, and am interested to read about experiences related to that. AFAIK doing read/write to UDF to anything else but a CD/DVD drive on Windows XP seems just to work after some extensive fiddling with the system for a while which doesn't work on other users computers (eventually), see (b). > Nathan Kroenert schrieb: [...] > But, it's a hassle. And if I don't have all my boxes up and running, > it's an even bigger hassle. And, if I'm wanting to cut one disk/device > and give it to multiple people (pass the parcle), it's an even bigger > hassle. > > I think we as a community should perhaps consider what the best approach > to this is, decide on it, and push for the resolution, be it NTFS, ext > or ZFS. Yes. That's what I actually meant. Looking at all the things I wrote above, I have to say: From a tech guys point of view, I understand the numerous problems caused by different platforms, different host architectures, and requirements like cross-platform read/write support (we haven't even thought about Mac here), patenting / IP issues (NTFS), ... . >From an end users point of view, however, this is _astoundingly_ inconvenient. Do I really want to reconsider (a) through (c) along with all platforms eventually (not) involved, again? Or, from point of view of someone who, after all, is an end user at least related to file systems, don't I simply want to "plug that darn thing in" and see read/write access to my files without size limitations and/or having to load and install bunches of drivers and mount that thing manually before doing anything? Yes, this is an aspect of community striving for a good solution, I think, and related to an actual file system just at second sight... :) Oh well, enough for that. Thanks for your patience and sorry for bothering. :) K.
