On Sat, 2004-09-11 at 13:02 +1000, Rod Butcher wrote: > Can anybody tell me about or point me to writing on differences between > & comparative strengths & weaknesses of EXT3 & NTFS ? I used NTFS for > years and found it bulletproof, in fact the only part of Windows I would > like to keep.
google gave me this:
http://linux.org.mt/article/filesystems
which is a reasonable starting point. NTFS is actually a reasonably
sophisticated piece of code. It has support for a bunch of things that
no-one ever seems to use. This page explains a little about it:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/fileio/base/ntfs.asp
NTFS supports most of the same stuff that EXT3 does -- sparse files,
hard links etc. It additionally supports compression and encryption in
the filesystem itself. IIRC it does meta-data journalling whereas EXT3
gives you full data journalling if you want it (or you can just tell it
to do meta-data journalling). Performance wise, I would expect NTFS to
be faster. EXT2/3 pre-date the current balanced tree fad that
filesystems are currently going through. If performance is important to
you then reiserfs is a good choice, though it has a reputation for being
lacking in recovery tools. I don't know how true that is since the
reiserfsprogs package does ship with the standard fsck variants that
claim to do the kinds of things you'd expect them to (superblock
recovery, tree-rebuilding etc). XFS is another good choice, and it comes
with recovery tools which are allegedly quite good. XFS is a 64-bit
filesystem so it has support for very large files.
And of course there is the fact that Windows and Linux use completely
different security models. You don't get the same fine-grained access
control with EXT3 as NTFS. XFS lets you do ACLs, which gets you some of
the confusing aspects of NTFS's security system if you want it.
If you're interested only in the safety of your files then EXT3 is ok.
Many people argue that it's the safest by virtue of its full-data
journaling, but I've had many EXT2 filesystems fail so I'm (probably
unreasonably) nervous about using it. These days I'm using XFS for
everything. Since its 1.2 release I've not had any problems with it. I
originally installed reiserfs when I was living in an area with frequent
blackouts (that had ultimately destroyed the ext2 partition that
preceded it). Reiser didn't miss a beat.
If you're interested in the more zany aspects of NTFS, keep an eye on
reiserfs. The dude has some crazy ideas about what filesystems should
do.
HTH,
James.
--
James Gregory <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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