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What file system to format the EXT HDD?

Posted: Sat Jun 04, 2011 10:39 pm
by jonnypb
Hi,

I have a qnap ts-119 and want to backup my nas to an external 2TB samsung drive. I'll probably just use the built-in backup utility unless someone tells me if there is a better one.

What should I format the EXT HDD as, EXT3, EXT4 or NTFS. I've read that a couple people have said that NTFS is quite slow on ARM based devices?

If I were to format it as EXT3 or EXT4 would I be able to unplug it and read the contents on a windows PC?

Thanks

Re: What file system to format the EXT HDD?

Posted: Sun Jun 05, 2011 12:26 am
by TonyPh12345
If you expect to read it NATIVELY on a Windows PC, it must be NTFS. EXT3 and EXT4 are Linux-specific file systems.

There are some Windows utilities "Out There" that can read EXT3/EXT4 filesystems but support for it is dodgy at best.

Re: What file system to format the EXT HDD?

Posted: Sun Jun 05, 2011 1:21 am
by jonnypb
TonyPh12345 wrote:If you expect to read it NATIVELY on a Windows PC, it must be NTFS. EXT3 and EXT4 are Linux-specific file systems.

There are some Windows utilities "Out There" that can read EXT3/EXT4 filesystems but support for it is dodgy at best.
OK thanks. I guess my main preference is to format it with a system that will give the best performance and it is purely for backup purposes so if my nas ever dies I can restore onto a new one.

Is there a big performance on a qnap nas between NTFS and EXT4?

Thanks

Re: What file system to format the EXT HDD?

Posted: Sun Jun 05, 2011 6:55 am
by P3R
jonnypb wrote:I guess my main preference is to format it with a system that will give the best performance and it is purely for backup purposes so if my nas ever dies I can restore onto a new one.
If so, Ext 4 is the choice for you.
Is there a big performance on a qnap nas between NTFS and EXT4?
When I tested on my TS-419P it was at least 50 % slower with NTFS compared to Ext 4 when copying a large number of pretty small files. I was pretty surprised by that result as Smallnetbuilder.com claims, that in their testing NTFS is even faster than Ext 3 on Intel-based models.

Then again I'm not sure that speed should be the only focus. When using the backup synchronize function (as I do 98 times out of 100) my incremental backups are finished in a few minutes, so 50 % slower isn't really an issue.

Re: What file system to format the EXT HDD?

Posted: Thu Jun 09, 2011 12:29 pm
by getlitleye
Hi,

I have problem i reinstalled Windows and now i use NTFS, but my old HD(MAXTOR) is on FAT32
and there are files what i need, so formatting isn't the right choice, what to do then?

Re: What file system to format the EXT HDD?

Posted: Thu Jun 09, 2011 5:30 pm
by P3R
getlitleye wrote:I have problem i reinstalled Windows and now i use NTFS, but my old HD(MAXTOR) is on FAT32
and there are files what i need, so formatting isn't the right choice, what to do then?
Off topic here but simply connect the disk to your Windows computer and read the data from it. Having Windows installed on NTFS doesn't prevent it from still reading FAT-disks.