ReFS or NTFS or exFAT

[Vilsen]

I have to decide which filesystem to choose for my
external 18 TB HDD .

exFAT is a better choice for large disks / partitions and lacks the trouble
with long filenames / long secuencies of directories but
has no logging and severe problems might occur :


What is exFAT?

Extended File Allocation Table, or exFAT, was also introduced by Microsoft. It was released in 2006 as a replacement for FAT32. It is compatible with older versions of Windows. exFAT is optimized for flash memory as well. This feature was intended to improve the performance of flash memory SD cards and USB drives. The SD Association adopted it as the default file system for SDXC cards bigger than 32 GB. exFAT is cross-compatible with other operating systems like Mac OS X and Linux as well. Today, exFAT is the primary choice for external hard drive formats like external SSDs to achieve the fastest read/write possible.
exFAT Pros:

Wide compatibility with operating systems.
No realistic file or partition size limits
Enables users to store files larger than 4 GB, the limit of FAT32

exFAT Cons:

Less compatible than FAT32
No Journaling functionality
Lacks consistency checks and advanced features of NTFS


What about ReFS ??

DOes anybody know ??

It must be possible to USE IN WINDOWS A N D LINUX !

Some programs is not availible in Linux MINT so I have to use Windows , unfortunately !!!

Photos and editing of these is the primary action.

[antikythera]

What about ReFS ??

Forget that, there's no support for linux without proprietary software which you'd have to contact Paragon about to purchase

Stick with NTFS

[MiZoG]

Single external drive of 18 tera? I'd expect this capacity from a fileserver, a NAS solution etc. Then a network interface and a good unix filesystem are the best.

[autodctr]

NTFS

[Lady Fitzgerald]

NTFS

[motoryzen]

wow... Strange I see many here recommending NTFS when it's designed to work with Windows and not Linux ( although yes I understand NTFS can work in Linux also)

I've used exFat on a handfull of big external hdd's and ssd's in my time and never had a single problem out of them connecting back and forth between Linux and Windows PCs

[Cosmo.]

exFAT is less robust than NTFS.

[Pierre]

NTFS

+1.

if you wish to share any Data across both Linux & Windows Systems.

[Vilsen]

Many thanks for all the quick and solid answers!

First a comment about WHY 18 TB ???

Well - hear and be amazed - the problems and the disk crashes that I had and that were described in previous question sessions such as:

"the transport endpoint is not connected - what is that ????"

and "New disk crash in progress ?? virus in UEFI in the new computer?"

and others DUE, according to ASUS, to the fact that the 2 different HDDs that I connected to motherboards were NOT listed in the motherboard's QVL!

Hear & be amazed!

I bought a motherboard (modern, newly manufactured) and on the recommendation of the store the CPU & Memory that would
sit there BUT NOBODY SAID ANYTHING about any QVL that you have to
read without this information came to me only after the disk crash.

For one, the file system was so completely destroyed on my main disk if
4TB with several hundreds of thousands of image files / movies so that the error message:

Error 0x80070079

5 HDDs that I have used for the last 5-6 years have worked without the slightest problem on my 10 year old computer and SATA connection. Several WD RED and later 3 TOSHIBA NAS N300.

EVERY YEAR I have put the original disk in a cloning dummy and cloned the contents to a brand new disk and then continued to
add image files / movie there !

NEVER any problems.


AND: I have always had EXFAT as a file system because
the file name restrictions that are allowed and the library structure restrictions of NTFS.

The latest working TOSHIBA disk was connected to new ones
motherboard: ASUS ROG STRIX B660 I and then came
successively different mysterious problems, e.g. then
"the transport endpoint is not connected"

I hastily bought a new disk and this time a Seagate
4TB because when I read about the meaning of the error messages and
it seemed that the TOSHIBA disk was beyond repair.

All image files were copied onto the new Seagate drive from a
of the BACKUP disks that luckily were available
and recent photos were imported "by hand" from camera memory cards
which thankfully had not yet been reformatted.

Now it turned out that the Seagate disk also did not work, but here too problems arose.

I ran CHKDSK /F /R /X Command to Fix Hard Drive Errors ...
but got again : Error 0x80070079

It was now that I received the information from ASUS support
to JUST ONLY ONLY the HDDs that were listed in
QVL = Qualified Vendor List can be used.

4 were listed, one of which was 3TB so it disappeared.
2 pieces were on 4TB and could have worked but where I
live, they were NOT IN THE STORE, but only the 18 TB one was available.

In terms of price per byte, it was cheaper than using 4TB * 4.5.

Besides, I could buy it the same day straight over the counter.

According to the manufacturer, it is HELIUM filled and made to last better and longer.

The question now becomes:

Which file system should I choose?

All but one say: NTFS.

The camera memory cards are formatted as exFat so I thought that
it would be better with this then also the loose backup disks
has this formatting.


I have read several of the type:


What Is Difference Between FAT32 vs exFAT vs NTFS


but I'm not going to paste THAT text here as you probably know MORE than that
what is written in these articles.


Could there be any advantage with EXFAT compared to NTFS?

I'm thinking about allowed filenames and such long directory structures that I've lost important data on in the past.

[Vilsen]

Remark: I am going to use Linux MINT 21 at 90% of all working time

and Windows 10 at some 10% of the time because some programs
are not available for LINUX-users ! (Only MAC&WIN as ususal)

so the filesystem must be COMPATIBLE with both.

I could of course make partitions with different filesystems like: NTFS on one,
,exFat on another and finally Ext4 where only files from Linux-session can be
written and read and then moved to the other partitions , but whats the point with that ?

I saw this in GParted:

Some filesystems seem to have all the ticks.....

[Vilsen]

Also maybe interesting :

[axrusar]

Just curious...
What is your backup plan for your 18TB setup?

[Hoser Rob]

Yes, if you need WIndows (and some do), NTFS is probably best.

If you need to do any low level formatting or fixing for NTFS don't use Linux for it. There are undocumented 'features' in the format spec. Linux tools aren't reliable. I format my ext HDs to ext4 now since I haven't used Windows for years, but in the past I've recovered NTFS drives with Hiren's Boot Stick on USB. There's no Linux equivalent for chkdsk.

[MiZoG]

exFAT is less robust than NTFS

NTFS is a journaled filesystem, exFAT is not.
Yet in my long-time experience with external NTFS disks, Linux has been just unreliable and many a time I had to repair their filesystems on Windows.
That was of course with the old fuse driver.
Never had those problems with exFAT.
Now if you use external disks to share files with Macs and Android devices as well, exFAT is the way to go. Period.

[Vilsen]

"Just curious...
"What is your backup plan for your 18TB setup?"

Well, as I have done for the past couple of years:

Copying to 2 separate external disks which are 5 TB each.

I could not find any SATA-->USB3 adapter / cloning station
that can handle as big as 18 TB , I'm afraid so this is
the only solution I can think of.

Some of you say : "NTFS is best" and some other :

" Never had those problems with exFAT."

I gues I just make one partition with NTFS and one with exAT
and put the same files on BOTH , then.

Crazy ??

I am extremely grateful for your advice and I assume these problems
apply to many who do not want to lose important data.

I also have a couple of old servers sitting in the closet but I'm not
knowledgeable enough to get these up and running and besides
there are only 3 disks + the one with the operative one and some kind of RAID level
which makes it 8 TB if all 3 disks are 4 TB each.

Then you must have a router/switch as well. Difficult .

[scjet45]

NTFS

@Vilsen
+1 again for NTFS if u need portability and/or DAS (Direct Attached Storage), with Windows + Linux compatibility.
Forget about Microsoft's exFAT, or ReFS, they're almost as dead and proprietary as Latin.
Or.
go NFS/Samba (aka NAS), far more convenient, and you can have almost any network-shared file system u want, ext*, xfs, zfs, ntfs, ... shared across all OS's, with r/w User access, or whatever ...

[ajgreeny]

Someone may already have said this but I didn't notice it so I will say it, or perhaps repeat it, anyway.
Do not use NTFS if you don't have a Windows system available as there are many potential faults that can occur in NTFS that can not be repaired using Linux so Windows is essential.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Someone may already have said this but I didn't notice it so I will say it, or perhaps repeat it, anyway.
Do not use NTFS if you don't have a Windows system available as there are many potential faults that can occur in NTFS that can not be repaired using Linux so Windows is essential.

While I agree there potential faults that can be repaired only in Windows, that doesn't always mean you shouldn't use NTFS in the absence of Windows. Definitely, you do not want to use NTFS on an internal drive in a Linux only machine. However, this "rule" can be bent a little in certain situations when talking about a backup drive. I do not use Windows in any way, shape, or form and haven't since Win 7 reached EOL. However, the executor of my will does. Of course, if I die, she can use my machines to read my data but, if I should die in, say, a fire or meteor strike (the former being far more likely), then those machines will have died with me. However, I have offsite backup drives, two for each data drive in my computer, in my safe deposit box several miles away from my home. Those drives are formatted NTFS so she can access my data from them on her Windows computer. Since they are bare drives, there also is a USB to SATA cable with the drives.

If the file system of one of those drives ever gets broken, instead of worrying about not being able to fix it, all that is needed is to reformat the "broken" drive, then repopulate it from another backup drive or the original in the computer. Yes, that can be time consuming but so what? Once started, the computer does all the work without any help (or interference) from me.

I suggest that anyone who dual boots and uses NTFS for their data have backups in ext4. Additional backups in NTFS wouldn't hurt but never in place of ext4.

[antikythera]

wow... Strange I see many here recommending NTFS when it's designed to work with Windows and not Linux ( although yes I understand NTFS can work in Linux also)

Better NTFS support has been added to the kernels recently

https://www.techrepublic.com/article/li ... tfs-users/

[Vilsen]

The last comment / answer leads me to believe that
As usual, I have been so over-clear in my description that the readers stumble over the words and lose the thread completely.

We start again from the beginning then:

HEY ! I photograph. I have about 300 thousand image files from
10+ years ago. These are on a HDD (a disk that spins)
and it has been connected via SATA 6Gb/s for a 10 years (+?)
old computer but now I have bought a NEW one!

When I connected the disk to the new one, everything became CORRUPT.

The QVL for the motherboard said I can ONLY use the 4 listed.

I just bought one of these.

I need to know which file system is best.

Because I am FORCED to use the programs provided by the camera manufacturer and because this
editing programs are ONLY available for APPLES OS & MICROSOFT'S OS but NOT for LINUX so I am forced to use windows !!!

I have an NVMe of 2TB where Windows 10 is located + Linux MINT 21.

Dual boot via GRUB2!

The decent-sized 18 TB disk with all the images should now
is formatted and there must be partitions correctly
size and FILESYSTEM compatible with
WINDOWS 10 AND LINUX MINT 21.


What should I choose ?


I use xnView to import the image files from
the camera memory card to the large storage disk.

xnView runs under Linux MINT 21.


Someone wrote:

"Someone may already have said this but I didn't notice it so
I will say it, or perhaps repeat it, anyway.

Do not use NTFS if you don't have a Windows system available
as there are many potential faults that can occur in NTFS
that can not be repaired using Linux so Windows is essential."



YES ! I HAVE !

I think I wrote that I am a photographer and that I
uses certain programs that are manufactured by companies
that does not care about us LINUX users
and therefore only do for OS= WINDOWS OS & APPLE-MAC-OS.

If I now use windows to 10% as - I wrote - and
have DUAL-boot, I must reasonably have access to
the various programs that windows 10 has.