What is the recommended External Storage file format

[jsteng]

My external hard drive used by HBS3 for Daily backups broke yesterday.
So I bought a Seagate One Touch which is in exFAT file format.
Should I reformat it to a format that is more suitable for QNAP? ext4 perhaps?

I will be using this with HBS3 Daily backup, with versioning backup as shown in attached pix.
I like for HBS3 to only copy files that were modified - and not having to copy everything everyday.
What file format supports this feature?

[dolbyman]

Use a format that all your regular clients can natively read (for when the NAS is dead and backups are needed)

NTFS or exFAT for Windows
ext4 for Linux
whatever Apple uses

[PeterT1959]

My feeling is that you want a format that is readily accessible to other computers. If your NAS fails you might want easy access to the backups from your regular computing platform for instance.

Unfortunately Windows, for instance, doesn't handle Linux file systems very well.

My sense is that using exFat would not be a bad thing.

(Maybe time for me to follow my own advice! My external backup drive is in ext4 format and the majority of my PCs are Windows except for some Raspberry Pis)

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[PeterT1959]

Well... I tried what I'd suggested; reformatted my external drive as ExFat and performed my regular daily backup to it. (Contents of two calibre ebook libraries, my music library and all daily / weekly / monthly backups of two PCs).

The initial backup took about 18 hours, so I assumed the next daily backup would be just any changed files.

No.... The next daily backup was including many (if not all) of the unchanged files.

Reformatted as ext4, completed the initial backup again and next time the daily behaved as expected; only backing up changed files.

I think I have some external USB drives elsewhere in the house; time to experiment some more with them.



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[Gaudi]

Nice finding.
Please keep us posted.

If you end up confirming that exFat does now play well with HBS3, it will be nice to post a ticket with QNAP.

I currently have several external backups, either NTFS or EXT4 (which I think is more compatible with journaling of QNAP, as it is the same format that the unit handles internally).
I have not used extFat, although I have bought the license for my old unit to access exFat external drives.

Have subscribed to learn a little bit more about best formats.

Regards

[RobbieWilkes]

Good afternoon jsteng

Hope you don't mind if I follow up on this post with my own questions.

Were you ever able to determine which format was better to use for the external drive (between NTFS and exFat)?

My 12tb drive, to which I currently have my data backed (full details here - viewtopic.php?t=166600 if you're interested) is formatted NTFS, and it is RIDICULOUSLY slow, when copying files to / from, when connected directly to my TS-451. In fact, it is faster (though still not "FAST") for me to connect it to my wired HTPC, and copy the files ACROSS THE NETWORK. In reading other posts, it appears to be related to the terrible and outdated NTFS drivers used by QNAP.

So, I was wondering, when I finally have time get all my media files sorted and transferred back onto my NAS, whether I should re-format the external drive to exFat, for use with my scheduled backups, of if it would even make a difference.

Thanks for any insight or recommendations you can offer.

[ThatQGuy]

I am now using ext3/4 for my external drives. Data transfers occur at the speed you'd expect. I do have a need to copy data to some NTFS drives and the speed of molasses is driving me up the wall.

I asked on another post if it's possible to update drivers manually. Is there a knowledge base article where we can update our system's NTFS drivers ourselves? (I don't assume it's as easy as doing apt-get for the latest ntfs drivers, of is it?)