Which format for my external USB hard drive?

[mcse37]

I use this external drive for backups.  Which format should I use? 

I've heard that ext2 is very fast.  I'm not sure if I need the overhead of ext4.  Comments?

Thanks!

Bob

[Old-Polack]

I use this external drive for backups.  Which format should I use? 

I've heard that ext2 is very fast.  I'm not sure if I need the overhead of ext4.  Comments?

Thanks!

Bob

An ext2 file system is very fragile and easy to corrupt. With ext3 a journal is created on an ext2 file system making it very robust. If all your systems can read ext4 that's a good option too, as it's supposedly faster than ext3, and at least as robust, if not more so.

If you have a mix of older and newer systems that will read the file system, I'd go with ext3 to be sure all can read and write to it.

[Joble]

It depends.

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DOH!  O-P got here first... Again!   

[T6]

those backups are going to be copy/paste folders or a specific backup, a compressed file?

if you want a specific compressed file created by a backup app it is better to use ext3, ext4 can give you some problems, not common but can happen

if all you need is a copy of your personal files that could be used on another machine, maybe a windows machine you need ntfs

[Was_Just19]

short answer .........  ext3   

[everge48]

short answer .........  ext3    

+1

With the right drivers installed both Mac and Windoze can read/write Ext3. With the right firmware Ext3 drives can be used by WDTV HD Media Players. I had a problem using Ext4 for my external drives because they would only work on Linux.

[Xero]

 Another for ext3. My storage drives are all formatted with this, and with the Ext2Fsd driver installed and configured, I can load and play with them fine in Windows machines also. I keep a small fat32 partition at the front of my external 1TB I take everywhere, if people want to access the rest they have to install the above driver from the fat32 and reboot (yay for windows! Reboot everytime you install something. ), and should be navigating it fine.

[blarney]

I made 2 partitions and formatted one as fat32 and the other ext3. I had a few problems with ext4 on a Debian Squeeze install where it kept needing FSCKing because of corruption so I'm steering clear of that at the moment. Don't know why and it may be nothing to do with the file system but for the moment its put me off.


Cheers,
Blarney

[Duvid]

After trying several scenarios, I settled on having one partition with a bootable  PCLOS (used unebootin), an adequate size partition to move data to other window machines as ntfs, and the majority of the drive to have for my storage in ext3. It has become a very versatile 320 gig WD Passport.