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Backing up FreeNAS to external drives

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Removable File System (Score: 1)

by bryan@pipedot.org on 2014-10-22 06:34 (#2TJY)

The world is sorely lacking a sane removable file system. FAT has tons of technical and political problems and yet it remains the only filesystem that is even remotely feasable for cross platform removable disks.
  • Small single file size limit (4.2 GB)
  • Small total drive capacity
  • Microsoft's long filename patents
  • Non-free extensions that only work with Microsoft operating systems
If you live completely in Linux, you can format your drives as ext4. But good luck trying to get Windows or Macs to see it.
If you live completely in Apple-land, you can format your drives as HFS+. But good luck trying to get either Windows or Linux to see it.
If you live completely in Windows, you can format your drives as NTFS. Linux does have multiple competing options of supporting NTFS, but they all basically suck (read only, disables journal, etc.)

Case in point:
My car's stereo system has a USB port that you stick a thumb drive into to play mp3s. Guess what the only supported file system is?
New smart TVs have USB ports that you can stick a thumb drive into to play MP4s, MKVs, and AVIs. Guess what the only supported file system is?
My digital camera uses an SD card to store photos and videos that I take. Guess what the only supported file system is?

Re: Removable File System (Score: 2, Interesting)

by evilviper@pipedot.org on 2014-10-22 16:06 (#2TK5)

Ext2 is more compatible than you'd expect. There are 3rd party drivers for Windows and OS X that work very well. The problem is, Windows won't read anything but the first partition on a USB drive, so you can't have a small FAT partition with the drivers, and the rest Ext2. Some firmware tricks could do it, but no companies seem to care about the patent licenses and other problems with FAT32/exFAT, so I end up carrying around two USB thumb drives.

Plus, a surprising number of embedded systems are Linux based, and the developers just don't disable Ext2, so it sometimes works even when not mentioned anywhere.

It would just take a couple digital camera manufacturers to adopt Ext2 (instead of exFAT) and include it in their drivers, and Google making Ext2 the default for Android. Then Microsoft and Apple would quickly be forced to include it by default to avoid being left out and seen as OSes that don't "just work" with accessories.

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2014-10-22 22:23 Interesting +1 bryan@pipedot.org

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