[plug] File-systems and Windows

[Craig Ringer]

> I have a Windows machine and a Linux Box and sometimes require one of 
> the hard disks from the Linux box to be put in the windows box. The 
> Windows box is NT4 but I don't like the NTFS support that is currently 
> offered.

In linux, you mean? Well, its pretty damnn amazing for totally 
reverse-enginered work - but the write support is only getting useable 
in the most recent 2.5 kernels. So if you want read/write support, its 
fat32 for you.

> I am running Debian Woody. I was wondering what would be a good 
> choice of FS.

The only filesystems currently readable and writeable _natively_ by both 
  windows and linux are the fat16 and fat32 filesystems.

> I was thinking maybe VFAT as I don't want to use FAT16 as 
> FAT32 isn't supported under NT4.

  "vfat" is the name of the driver in linux that handles fat32 - there 
is no "vfat" file system as distinct from fat32. Also, are you _sure_ 
fat32 isn't supported? Disk Administrator on the (ghastly) NT4 box here 
will let me format "fat" volumes, which almost certainly means fat32 due 
to volume size limitiations on fat16. If yours cant, make sure you're 
running service pack 6.

The ideal solution is samba - and I must say I can access samba volumes 
fine from our NT4 at work. The server doesn't show up in the network 
browser, though - I have to enter the \\server\share "url" in the run 
dialog to get to it. Make sure you're using encrypted passwords and have 
set up sensible SMB passwords ("man smbpasswd").

-- 
Craig Ringer
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