Many modern Linux distros ship with NTFS read/write functionality. However, this is not the whole story. NTFS does not use the same ownership and permissions model as native filesystems. When you copy the files back off the device onto your hard disk, you will find the owner, group and permissions settings will have been lost. This probably won't bother you much if you're just using the device to haul around a few large files between machines, but if you're going to use it as a backup or anything like that it might be an issue.
However, NTFS and FAT are at least readable by Windows, OSX and most Linux machines, so these filesystems are very useful for transferring stuff between OSes. I tend to format my external media (non-flash anyhow) with ext4 for most of the space (the primary purpose of these drives is backups), and NTFS for transfer to and from Windows machines. I've also been playing with truecrypt, which is fun. On my main backup drive I made a small FAT partition at the start with the truecrypt binaries, and then split the rest of the space 60/40 between encrypted ext4 and NTFS partitions. Mouse On 27 November 2011 08:52, John Jason Jordan <[email protected]> wrote: > On Sun, 27 Nov 2011 00:45:17 -0800 > Benjamin Kerensa <[email protected]> dijo: > >>Mac OSX can read NTFS but not write to it... There is a app called >>MacFuse that makes writing to NTFS possible. >>If you don't have USB 3.0 ports then your not going to benefit from the >>speed of a USB 3.0 device and if you choose you >>could format the thumbdrive and use another FS. I have USB 3.0 drives >>that have USB 3.0 support and use Ext4. > > I don't own any Macs, but I frequently need to work with people who do. > If their Mac can't read my flash drive that's a serious problem. Can > Macs read/write ext3 or ext4 filesystems? I think I should just > reformat it FAT32 and be done with it. > _______________________________________________ > PLUG mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug > _______________________________________________ PLUG mailing list [email protected] http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
