[plug] File-systems and Windows

[James Elliott]

I would like to comment on VFAT vs NTFS with regard to Windows/Linux
installations, based on yesterday's experience.

When I installed Windows XP I chose the NTFS file system (the WinXP
installer give you a choice) because the technical expertise at my
wholesaler's said it was the better file system, and no doubt it is.  I used
half the HD for WinXP and reserved half for Debian.

Yesterday (after downloading Win XP SP1 patch) my Win XP was going
unbelievably slowly ... like 5 minutes, or more, to respond to a mouse click
!!!!  Eventually I rang Microsoft.  After they totally detuned my computer
and all I had left was a black screen, the MS adviser said something like
..... "if you had the FAT32 (VFAT) filesystem we could use your Win98 boot
disk to get out of this, but with NTFS we cannot do anything further for
you"

I said "So, I need to repartition, using FAT32 this time, Format and
reinstall?"
He said "That would work, but we NEVER advise re-formatting"
I said "Why not?"
He said "Cos it is against company policy, but since you want to reformat,
we cannot stop you doing so"
I said "I don't WANT to reformat - I want you to tell me how to fix my
computer".
He said "With NTFS there is nothing else we can do"
I said "So, I repartition and reformat"
He said "We cannot recommend that ..........." Grrrrrrrrrrr!!!!

Apart from the pathos of it all - the point I really want to make is this:
it might be much safer to select FAT32 as your file system when and if
loading WinXP, and as someone else said, that can be read and written to by
Linux as well.

Hope this helps someone avoid having to do what MS cannot recommend.

Kind regards

James Elliott

----- Original Message -----
From: "Craig Ringer" <craig at postnewspapers.com.au>
To: <plug at plug.linux.org.au>
Sent: Monday, September 23, 2002 2:06 PM
Subject: Re: [plug] File-systems and Windows


> > 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
> GPG Key Fingerprint: AF1C ABFE 7E64 E9C8 FC27  C16E D3CE CDC0 0E93 380D
> -- if it ain't broke, add features 'till it is. (or:)
> while (! broken) { features ++ ; broken = isBroken(features) }
>
>
>
>