Recommended file system for dual-boot backups?
So it's said over and over that NTFS isn't supported for gaming, but what about other uses?
I'm interested in setting up an external hard drive for backing up files from both Bazzite & Windows, and might be interested in setting up a partition on one of my primary drives for sharing data between the OSes.
I get the impression that using NTFS from Linux much isn't a good idea (though I do automount my Windows drive read-only), so what are the alternatives for sharing data between them?
13 Replies
if what you backup needs linux file permissions to be correct then btrfs
otherwise ntfs can be used but will have less performance in linux and permissions on permission sensitive files (like ssh keys) will be wrong
so I don't think I'm too worried about linux perms
I am more concerned about avoiding questionably supported filesystem drivers (including from the windows side)... so I was thinking more toward least-common-denominator like FAT32?
exfat will be probably better, but do note that its arent as robust as ntfs/btrfs
robustcurious what you mean by that (guess I'll take links to reference at this rate)
exfat is newer than ntfs/btrfs so its less battle tested on linux
guess I have to accept a compromise somewhere ðŸ«
I have been able to use Pika Backup with the save location on a NTFS drive without issue (it mounts to
/run/media/$username/$drivename)
The only thing you will not be able to do is set up auto-mount on the drive without manually editing fstabyeah, I've already done that for my main Win partition (but read-only), not too afraid of working with that
it's mostly paranoia and maybe outdated advice about NTFS drivers on linux possibly leading to data corruption
If it's very critical data you want to back up it might not hurt to invest in a dedicated internal or external drive specifically for Linux backups (btrfs for SSD or ext4 for HDD), or something on the cloud
but at least speaking for myself I have not encountered any corruption, just the occasional file that needs to be renamed because some symbols and case-sensitivity aren't supported on NTFS
so that's another compromise option
I have an external HDD for this and I was hoping that I wouldn't need to split it for win. vs. linux/bazzite
I have two external drives I use for backups formatted as NTFS like I mentioned earlier
Consider how critical your data would be to lose and design your backup strategy around that, I think
Losing vintage family photos would hurt a lot more than losing a Steam game backup
yeah fair enough
no journaling also, power loss or yanking the drives can corrupt data
if you want robust system to backup data that works in both os, consider NAS