FAT32 exFAT NTFS

[criky]

Hi there

Currently I’m using external USB drive to move my UBOS backups.
But realized file size over 4GB can not be created on USB drive due to the FAT32 restrictions.

Next runner-up I tried is to mount NTFS format, but it seems write is not permitted due to the Linux kernel NTFS driver. So is it possible to install NTFS-3g package on UBOS?

Finally when I checked exFAT, UBOS can not recognize the format at all.

That being said;
is there any workaround to evade this situation and allow me to move backup files larger than 4GB?

Thanks in advance and stay safe!

[j12t]

Why not use Linux default ext4 or UBOS default btrfs?

[criky]

Why not use Linux default ext4 or UBOS default btrfs?

Thanks.

Just because I want to migrate my data to windows local machine, not Linux machine.
If I use btrfs file system on USB drive, then there is no other way to directly read it on the Windows client unless I have a third party app to do that, right?

[j12t]

According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_Allo ... imum_sizes , FAT32 goes to ~2 TB. Do you need anything larger than this?

There is a note there that Windows won't create anything larger than 32 GB (I'm not a Windows guy, so I have to believe them...) So perhaps init your file system on UBOS with mkfs.vfat or the like? (Obviously that would erase whatever is on your disk already, and be careful which disk you format)

[criky]

According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_Allo ... imum_sizes , FAT32 goes to ~2 TB. Do you need anything larger than this?

There is a note there that Windows won't create anything larger than 32 GB (I'm not a Windows guy, so I have to believe them...) So perhaps init your file system on UBOS with mkfs.vfat or the like? (Obviously that would erase whatever is on your disk already, and be careful which disk you format)

Thanks for your reply.

FAT32 just supports maximum 2.2TB(2.0TiB) for the volume(logical partition of the hard drive). What I mean for the restircition is the each individual file size as it explained in your Wikipedia link like this :

The maximum possible size for a file on a FAT32 volume is 4 GiB minus 1 byte or 4,294,967,295 (232 − 1) bytes

As a consequence, I can not copy a file larger than 4GB to a USB stick which has FAT32 file system.

After taking a further step, I decided to take measures like below.(I hope it will somehow help you and others understand)

1. Invoke mkfs.btrfs and have USB drive formatted with Btrfs file system. Then install free and open source Windows driver for Btrfs like the one here (https://github.com/maharmstone/btrfs) as Btrfs supports 16EiB for a single file.(and more importantly UBOS has copy-on-wirte on this)

2. More practical option. Just use PSFTP for remote file sharing and backups, as UBOS supports SFTP natively. (Even PSFTP allows you to resume the file transfer when it fails unexpectedly)

@j12t
In my opinion, Linux NTFS-3g package seems to be a good option as it may ease the effort of installing the compatibility driver for Windows.
Thanks.

[j12t]

Filed: https://github.com/uboslinux/ubos-buildconfig/issues/79

[Shaune]

Sorry to bump an older post. @j12t I see that you added ntfs-3g in https://github.com/uboslinux/ubos-buildconfig/issues/79. I am also trying to mount an ntfs file system. When I try I get

Code: Select all

mount: /var/shepherd/raid: unknown filesystem type 'ntfs'.

am I missing something? I reviewed this article but didnt see anything that was helpful.

As always thank you for your assistance.