Jon LaBadie wrote:
> Some of you are undoubtedly using external hard drives
> that are USB or FireWire connected.  Perhaps as your
> holding disk or for virtual tapes.
> 
> These drives seem to come formatted with FAT-32 file
> systems.  I wonder how people handle them.
> 
> Do you leave your external drives as FAT-32 or do you
> reformat to something like ext2 or ext3?

If I'm only going to be using it on Linux I reformat to ext3.
If I'm expecting to sometimes use it on Windows boxes I leave
it FAT-32.
> 
> What considerations went into your decision?
> 
>  features of one type FS vs another type?
No.
>  compatibility?
Yes.
>  security?
On a portable drive?  Guess you would need to use an encrypted
filesystem.
>  sloth?
Nope, repartitioning and formatting doesn't take long.

Since I don't build any MS filesystem support into my Linux
server kernels, ext3 is a much easier solution.
At home, where the drive may be sometime needed on XP as well
as Linux, I leave mine as FAT-32.

Frank

> 
> Thanks for the input.  My drives arrive tomorrow. :)
> 
> 


-- 
Frank Smith                                      fsmith AT hoovers DOT com
Sr. Systems Administrator                       Voice: 512-374-4673
Hoover's Online                                   Fax: 512-374-4501