Ubuntu :: Best Filesystem For USB Hard Drive?
Feb 5, 2010
I recently bought a Western Digital 640GB external USB hard drive. It was ****-house, had all these extra security features and windows programs hard coded onto a non-writable flash chip that can't be deleted. So I returned the WD and got a Seagate 500GB external hard-drive. Perfect. I was then faced with the perennial problem of choosing a filesystem. Preferably one that works well in Linux, but still portable. FAT32 isn't much good for anything these days, with size limits and all. NTFS is proprietary and unreadable on Mac OSX. Compatibility problems exist for most other proprietary filesystems, and a whole bunch of the free ones as well.
In the end I chose ext3. "ext3?" I hear you say - you might be surprised. Here are my reasons: For a start, ext3 is certainly the most well supported filesystem in Linux. That goes without saying. Secondly, and not everyone knows this: there exists open source ext2/3 drivers for both Windows and Mac. Ext3 is, in fact, just as portable as NTFS - and it is open source (read: free from bull-shite). My setup is as follows:One 499GB partition formatted as EXT3 One 1GB partition formatted as FAT32, containing drivers:MacFUSE + fuse-ext2 for Mac OSX, and Ex2Fsd for Windows.
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Sep 8, 2010
I've been using ubuntu about a year, so I have a fair amount of experience with it. Today I was trying to install ubuntu on my new laptop, which doesn't have an optical drive. I don't have a usb stick, so I attempted to partition my external hard drive. I stupidly clicked "erase disk" on startup disk creator and erased the entire drive instead of the partition. I want to get back the files I had on this external. I searched and managed to find that people had been successful with testdisk. when I choose to analyse, it only finds the partition I created for the live cd.
When I choose advanced, I can find my older partition (FAT32) but when I choose to undelete I get:
Code:
No file found, filesystem seems damaged.
When I choose boot I get:
Code:
Boot sector
Bad
Backup boot sector
Bad
Sectors are identical.
A valid FAT Boot sector must be present in order to access. Any data; even if the partition is not bootable. I searched but I couldn't find anyone receiving this error message or how to deal with it. So I tried using photorec. Photorec is recovering all of my documents currently but without the filenames and file structure, it's more or less worthless.
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Jan 20, 2011
I have a rather large USB drive that I'd like to be able to use across the different machines I own. I'm having a hard time figuring out what would be the best file system to use on it to be able to read/write things from the 3 OSs I'm in contact with: Windows, Linux and Mac.
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Apr 10, 2011
my external HDD of 750GB bring me an error during mounting!it asks me to get to windows and reboot twice or cmd chkdsk/f of which when i do it only option comes is to format it, i do not wanna format it coz it's with a lot of ma useful data!am using debian just asking if its possible to retrieve ma data from it using commands persay and what are those
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Nov 29, 2010
I have a spare harddrive that I want to store my videos on. They are in mp4 format. I'm using cfdisk to create a new clean partition on the drive. What filesystem type should i make it (linux,HPFS/NTFS,FAT16...)
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Jul 19, 2010
I'm trying to partition/format a new external hard disk for backup and have run into a snag that now prevents my computer from booting. In the description below of what happened please bear with me as I do my best to remember the commands and screen output (which for obvious reasons I don't have in front of me).As root.The disk was subsequently writable. However, I then realized that the default start and end cylinders had resulted in a very small partition apparently occupying some free cyclinders in the beginning of the disk.
So next I ran fdisk again, deleting the sdc4 I had just created and creating a new one instead, this time using the cylinders at the end of the disk. When I exited fdisk I got a message something like that the new tables can only be read upon a subsequent reboot. I ran mkfs again, but not e2label. Indeed using /sbin/fdisk -l, sdc4 still had the small size as defined initially. So I rebooted.
Now when it comes up I get something like "checking filesystems. fchk.ext3: can't resolve 'LABEL=/media/LaCie2TB1'" and am prompted to login as root to correct. I tried to simply delete sdc4 again but that didn't help. I also tried to edit /etc/fstab (using vi, which I don't know at all) but it kept telling me that this is a read only file, even though permissions are rw for root.Can anyone out there help me so that (1) I can boot into my computer, and (2) I can correctly partition and format the hard drive??
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Mar 24, 2010
I've had a look at some similar threads but as I'm very new to linux they're already a bit technical for me. Sorry, this calls for someone with patience. I gather from other threads that disconnecting an external drive without unmounting is a no-no, and this seems to be the likely cause. Now the disk is read only and I'm unable to change any settings through the usual control panel on ubuntu. I'm just not familiar with the terminal instructions. I tried to cut and past a few command lines from other threads but I got some warnings that proceding could damage data. Like this one: WARNING! Running e2fsck on a mounted filesystem may cause SEVERE filesystem damage.
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Jan 25, 2010
I got a dell inspiron 1501 laptop with a 80Gb sata drive what is the best solution to add data storage space for someone that love to have multiples operating systems at hand Note: I use mostly linux so I won't need to change my laptop for many years maybe ...
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Mar 16, 2010
My parents bought a new hard drive for a laptop that I've owned for several years. It's much larger than the current one, so I plan on splitting it up to dual boot it with Ubuntu.I have no problem with partitioning a drive (I always keep a LiveCD handy), but my question is this: how can I go about moving the existing partition to the new drive? This is a laptop, so I can't simply plug the new drive into another slot.
Also, even if I manage to move it, will Windows still work on the new drive in a larger partition? I've had this laptop for quite a while, and I've lost the recovery discs that came with it a long time ago. I also have a lot of software without CDs to reinstall them with. This makes not reinstalling Windows a high priority.
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May 1, 2010
Trying to install Fedora 12 using the 6 CDs. Trying to install on an older x86 box.Problem is that when detecting my hard drive, Fedora 12 recognizes it as a sda hard drive instead of hda hard drive. I have no SCSI connected to my computer what so ever. It's an old fashion PATA Western Digital hard drive.If I proceed with the install, Fedora 12 only installs 200MB of the OS from the first CD only. No options for additional software or anything.
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Mar 21, 2009
Sometimes when I do anything write heavy such as transferring backup or downloading large files from the net, the machine crashes almost completely.
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Jun 3, 2011
I have a laptop with only 30GB storage and I want to install Lubuntu in virtual box but Lubuntu needs 5GB of storage space which i dont have. Could i use an external 160GB hard drive to act as the hard drive for the virtual machine without affecting the files that are already on the external hard drive
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Jan 14, 2009
I have 2 ubuntu's: 1 on my ineternal hard drive, 1 on my external
When I startup without my ext drive =>GRUB error 21.
And when I plug it in I can choose: the standard ubuntu kernel is the one on my external, and the original one is listed under other...
I'd like to be able to startup without external hard drive and make the ubuntu on my internal drve the standard.
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Jan 17, 2011
I recently bought 320 GB Trancend external hard disk and working fine days back.Earlier i could copy from and to the hard disk with out any issue. I dont know what happened after that now i am not able to write any files in to the external hard disk. This is not NTFS formatted device. here is some of the out put from terminal.
Code:
sundar@sundar-sundar:~$ fdisk -l
Disk /dev/sda: 120.0 GB, 120034123776 bytes
[code]...
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Sep 11, 2010
I have been trying to install centos on my hp servers and when i get to partitions my hard drives the OS does not detect any harddrives. I have 4 scsi drives and i believe a intergrated smart array controller.
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May 22, 2011
is there a way to write/unpack .qcow2 hard disk image directly to real hard drive in Linux?(I know it's possible to unpack .qcow2 to .raw and then dd to drive, but I'd like to skip .raw since its large)
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Aug 23, 2010
I have a SATA drive that worked fine. Then I installed two more hard drives into my system. When these hard drives are installed, if I try to access the SATA drive in Linux, it will start lightly clicking and then the drive will become unavailable. If I power on the machine without the other two hard drives then it works fine. What could be causing this to happen? I don't think it's heat because the two hard drives are far away from the SATA drive.
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Jan 4, 2010
I recently installed Bio-Linux 5.0 as a dual boot system with XP for some bioinformatics applications, but Im having some problems with the amount of disk space which can be allocated specifically for the Ubuntu install.
I partitioned a 250 GB portable hard drive into:
/dev/sdb1: 154.76 GiB (with 30 GiB allocated for Ubuntu)
/dev/sdb2 : 78.13 GiB
Ive been using blastclust to analyse some very large data sets, which keeps on crashing due to filesystem running out of disk space.
When I installed Bio-Linux 5.0 from the live cd, the maximum size I could allocate to the install was 30 GiB, and I havent been able to find a way to change this.
Ive tried using System->Administration->Partition Editor using the live cd, and can view / delete the partitions, but I cant find a way to specifically alter the disk space allocation for Ubuntu.
How do I increase the filesystem size to larger than the current 30 GiB?
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Feb 12, 2011
i have ubuntu 10.10 installed on a 40gb hard drive and have setup arch linux on a seperate 160gb drive and am at the Choose bootloader screen of Arch Linux. My question is do i use arch linux to reinstall GRUB or do I choose none and configure GRUB to see both? if its the later can you tell how. Oh and Ubuntu is on sda and Arch is on sdb
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Jan 23, 2010
I wanted to know if i can install 9.10 onto a usb flash drive--without using my computers hard drive at all when running ubuntu off the flash drive-
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Aug 26, 2010
I just booted one of my computers from a usb drive I had installed Ubuntu 10.04 LTS to, and when I booted it up on that computer, it worked fine. Then, when I powered down the computer and booted it back up to the main hard drive, it booted to the same that my flash drive was running, but my flash drive was not plugged in!! How is this possible? Did it copy itself over my other operating system? There is no trace of it. By the way, that, too, was ubuntu 10.04.
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Jun 19, 2011
I would like to install Linux Ubuntu 11.04 on an external hard drive - its partitioned and ready for Linux.I've downloaded and burnt the .iso file to a DVD so its all good so far...First of all... is this possible without messing up my macbook? I don't particularly want to break into my macbook to disconnect the hard drive (I read on a tutorial for a previous version of Ubuntu that I'd have to do that... - does it still apply to 11.04?) - as it voids the warranty (I checked ).The reason I ask this is because I had a friend who partitioned their internal hard drive and installed Ubuntu on it. But after installation was complete they couldn't boot up Windows 7 or Ubuntu... and it resulted in them having to clean install Windows 7... - I don't want to end up in that situation
Second... If it is possible to install it without messing up my macbook... - Do I just follow the install instructions but just make sure that where possible I make sure that everything is installed on my external hard drive?...I really need someone to put my mind at rest that everything will run smoothly and that I'll be able to run Mac OS X as usual but also that I'll be able to boot from my external hard drive to run Ubuntu.
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Mar 23, 2010
I am trying to move a whole bunch of files from one partition on one hard drive to the same partition on another hard drive. Can I mount the same partition (same name, different drives, i.e. /data on /dev/hda1 and /data on /dev/hdb1)and copy those files? Shutdown the server, take out /dev/hda1 and boot up with the new drive and it's /data contents.
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Jan 20, 2010
I have ubuntu server acting as a router installed on a 60 gig drive, i'd like to use that drive in another machine and replace it with a 5 gig drive. how can i transfer from the 60 gig drive to the 5 gig drive?
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Jun 23, 2010
I am soon going to have to return my intel ssd for replacement. Therefore, I am going to be cloning the 160gb drive to a 320gb drive to keep my system settings while I am waiting for my new drive. I will not change the size of the partitions to fill the 320gb drive. I'll just change the grub settings if I absolutely have to. After that, I am going to have to clone the 320gb drive back to the replacement 160gb drive. Am I going to have problems doing that since I will be going from a larger to a smaller drive?I typically use Clonezilla with the default settings.
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Oct 7, 2010
I want to load ubuntu on my home pc. I have two hard drives but not have enough dvd's to back everything up on #2 hard drive. If I load ubuntu on drive 1 can I get in two drive two?
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Mar 6, 2010
I was running ubuntu as a live cd and I wanted to format my pen drive into an ext3 filesystem. I put in sudo mkfs /dev/sda1, but know im thinking that sda1 was my HDD!! I removed the cd from my computer, and it wont boot up into windows anymore!The only thing that is giving me hope is that the mkfs took about 1 min to format whatever it was formatting (my pen drive or my hdd!!) and my hdd is 500gb big. Is there anyway that I could have accidentaly formatted my HDD?
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Apr 27, 2011
Basically, my Ubuntu 10.10 desktop crashed and now when I try to boot into it I get all sorts of error messages and then I get dropped into a shell - it can't find the device etc. I tried running fsck from the command line but it can't find it. My DVD Drive isn't reading properly so I have no way of running the Recovery software on there.
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May 18, 2011
I am very new to linux, and I have a question regarding the filesystem check (fsck). The power recently went out and when I tried to restart linux the following error appears:
*/dev/sda1 contains file system w/errors, check forced it then goes on to say..
*An error occured during the file system check. Dropping you to a shell; the system will reboot when you leave the shell. Give root password for maintenance (or type Control-D to continue) I wasn't sure what to do, but checked some other online forums and they suggested running fsck manually - so I typed in the root password - and used the command, "fsck -A -V ; echo == $? ==" it then gave the following message
*WARNING!!! Running e2fsck on a mounted filesystem may cause SEVERE filesystem damage
*Would you like to continue (y/n)
Again, I wasn't sure what to do so i just checked no. I then manually turned off the computer and was prompted at the beginning to press Alt-3. I was brought to another screen and it informed me one of the drives was degraded and suggested rebuilding the array. I tried doing this, but it still brings me back to the original error of, "/dev/sda1 contains file system w/errors, check forced," and the process continues.
Also, when I tried to rebuild the array, I didn't backup any of the data on our home directory before doing this (which was probably a big mistake). After being prompted to type the root password, I was able to give the ls command and look at all the directories...the home directory where our data was stored was empty and I am afraid I may have lost some information. Is there a possibility that data was lost when I was trying to rebuild using the old drives?
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May 30, 2011
I have 350GB external Western Digital USB hard Drive.When I try to remove it from the system by executing Safely Remove Drive menu the fedora 15 system gets stuck.The processor starts giving a hum sound and it goes on even if it is left for half an hour in the stuck state.The Mouse is not working and everything is halted.
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