Jon LaBadie wrote: > Some of you are undoubtedly using external hard drives > that are USB or FireWire connected. Perhaps as your > holding disk or for virtual tapes. > > These drives seem to come formatted with FAT-32 file > systems. I wonder how people handle them. > > Do you leave your external drives as FAT-32 or do you > reformat to something like ext2 or ext3?
If I'm only going to be using it on Linux I reformat to ext3. If I'm expecting to sometimes use it on Windows boxes I leave it FAT-32. > > What considerations went into your decision? > > features of one type FS vs another type? No. > compatibility? Yes. > security? On a portable drive? Guess you would need to use an encrypted filesystem. > sloth? Nope, repartitioning and formatting doesn't take long. Since I don't build any MS filesystem support into my Linux server kernels, ext3 is a much easier solution. At home, where the drive may be sometime needed on XP as well as Linux, I leave mine as FAT-32. Frank > > Thanks for the input. My drives arrive tomorrow. :) > > -- Frank Smith [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sr. Systems Administrator Voice: 512-374-4673 Hoover's Online Fax: 512-374-4501
