I’m running EndeavourOS and Windows 11. Each OS is on a separate disk, but I have a data disk that is currently NTFS that mount in both OSes. NTFS causes problems for some things in Linux, and I’m worried it’ll bork the drive for windows eventually, so I’m keen to find an alternative. I’ve read about the WinBTRFS driver so wondering if that is a better way to go?

I don’t want to run a server with a share to access this data because it is way to slow for my needs.

  • @Limonene
    32•2 months ago

    NTFS is considered pretty stable on Linux now. It should be safe to use indefinitely.

    If you’re worried about the lack of Unix-style permissions and attributes in NTFS, then getting BTRFS or ext4 on Windows may be a good choice. Note that BTRFS is much more complicated than ext4, so ext4 may have better compatibility and lower risk of corruption. I used ext3 on Windows in 2007 and it was very reliable; ext4 today is very similar to ext3 from those days.

    The absolute best compatibility would come from using a filesystem natively supported by both operating systems, developed without reverse engineering. That leaves only vfat (aka FAT32) and exfat. Both lack Unix-style permissions and attributes.

    • mubOP
      6•2 months ago

      sounds like my worries about NTFS reliability in Linux are more about historic reputation so I can probably relax on that front. The other issue with NTFS is performance in Linux is not great. FAT32 and exFat don’t like some filename characters from linux from what I read.

      WinBTRFS is tempting. I have frequent backups so I might just give it a try and see what happens.

      • @[email protected]
        2•2 months ago

        Fuse driver of ntfs-3g yes it’s slow but if configurate to use ntfs3 it’s same fast as in windows

        • mubOP
          3•2 months ago

          Didn’t know about ntfs3 so did some reading about it. There are some reports of corruptions, they were all fixed by letting windows do a chkdsk, and making sure the windows_names parameter when mounting the disk helped prevent problems.

          I’m going to live with ntfs3 for a while as see what happens.

      • @[email protected]
        1•2 months ago

        I use NTFS with Linux a lot, and have for years. The only issue I’ve ever had was Linux not being able to recover it properly after unsafely disconnecting it, but Windows fixed it just fine

    • @visor841
      4•2 months ago

      If you’re worried about the lack of Unix-style permissions and attributes in NTFS

      I’m pretty sure Linux still uses Unix-style permissions in NTFS, which causes issues when Windows tries to use its own permission system on the same partition.

    • @[email protected]
      1•2 months ago

      Hi @[email protected]! It’s so hard to grasp as a casual user the actual benefits from file systems. I use ext4 on all my devices.

      Could you point me to the required feature a file system needs to have in order to recover files after removing it with rm -rf?

      I heard there are tools for my current file system which could help me out; But is there some file system with a rm-cache (until the disk is powered off or the cache is full).

      Unix Permission is a must.

      Would appreciate some general hints (I do replicate my personal important files).