Linux mint ntfs or fat32

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Matumi Level 1
Posts: 24 Joined: Tue May 25, 2021 8:52 am Location: Germany

(solved) NTFS or Fat32 for data drive?

Post by Matumi » Wed May 26, 2021 10:11 am

I want to put my data on an second internal SSD, which I want to access from Linux Mint 20.1 and also access from Windows.

Should I rather format it to NTFS or to FAT32?

The drive is still empty at the Moment, so I definitely have the choice.

When reading about the topic on the Net, I keep reading that Linux does not fully support NTFS and might cause issues
and I also keep reading the opposite — that reading and writing to NTFS with Linux Mint is perfectly possible.

Which of those is more true?
Which of those is maybe outdated?

Last edited by LockBot on Wed Dec 28, 2022 7:16 am, edited 2 times in total.
Reason: Topic automatically closed 6 months after creation. New replies are no longer allowed.

Re: NTFS or Fat32 for data drive?

Post by LanceM » Wed May 26, 2021 10:55 am

Re: NTFS or Fat32 for data drive?

Post by 1000 » Wed May 26, 2021 10:59 am

Linux use NTFS-3G driver, because is open source.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTFS-3G

MS use own NTFS driver. It is their property.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTFS

Now NTFS-3G works and worked before, more or less,
You can read «Limitations» section.
https://jp-andre.pagesperso-orange.fr/p . imitations
But no one knows what will happen if MS makes newer NTFS.

Read about NTFS , FAT32 , exFAT
You pay attention to the limitations.

AndyMH Level 20
Posts: 12135 Joined: Fri Mar 04, 2016 5:23 pm Location: Wiltshire

Re: NTFS or Fat32 for data drive?

Post by AndyMH » Wed May 26, 2021 1:21 pm

Thinkcentre M720Q — LM21.1 cinnamon, 4 x T430 — LM20.3 cinnamon, Homebrew desktop i5-8400+GTX1080 Cinnamon 19.0

Re: NTFS or Fat32 for data drive?

Post by I2k4 » Fri May 28, 2021 7:26 am

No theory, only a decade of experience dual booting. Have always kept document and media files on the Windows partition and formatted thumb drives as NTFS in Windows, and have never had any difficulty mounting and accessing those from Mint / Ubuntu. The only recognition or corruption trouble I’ve ever had has been with FAT formatted thumb drives or camera cards. One caution may be to use Windows to do the NTFS drive formatting — I’ve occasionally had recognition failure in Win 7 with thumb drives I tried to format as NTFS from Linux.

TRUST BUT VERIFY any advice from anybody, including me. Mint/Ubuntu user since 10.04 LTS. LM20 64 bit XFCE (Dell 1520). Dual boot LM20 XFCE / Win7 (Lenovo desktop and Acer netbook). Testing LM21.1 Cinnamon and XFCE Live for new Lenovo desktop.

Peter Linu Level 7
Posts: 1631 Joined: Sun Nov 11, 2018 8:24 pm Location: Sinny, Straya

Re: NTFS or Fat32 for data drive?

Post by Peter Linu » Fri May 28, 2021 8:07 am

The other advantage of exFAT is that it can be ‘read’ in iOS, Windoze AND Linux.
It’s not available to partition in Gparted but it is in Discs.

Cinnamon 21.1 Thinkpad T440p: 4 core i7-4712, 64bit, 16Gb RAM, 1Tb SSD, 2Tb HDD, 256Gb SATA M.2, VB w Win10 & Q4OS & LMDE-5 (32bit) / Cinnamon 21.1 Lenovo Y50-70 16Gb RAM 1Tb SSD, VB-Win10 / Q4os on RPi4b & Asus Atom (2011)

Re: NTFS or Fat32 for data drive?

Post by Petermint » Fri May 28, 2021 8:14 pm

A camera needs exFAT. Windows and Linux do not. Use the superior NTFS.

If you line up file systems, NTFS is better than the old Linux Ext3 but not as good as Ext4. exFAT does not have any of the good features of NTFS or Ext4, no journaling or similar protection.

Copying from exFAT and NTFS to Ext4 works because Ext4 accepts every character and file name. Copying from Ext4 to exFAT or NTFS is equally bad as they both have the same fine name limitations.

Dual boot with NTFS sharing has worked 100% for many years until a recent version of Windows when Windows added some shutdown flag. If you start Windows then boot to Linux without shutting down Windows, an NTFS partition can be marked as read only or unreadable. Just reboot to Windows and shut down properly.

On the Linux side, the big danger is USB attached disks. It does not matter what format you use, Linux can delay the disk writes until after you unplug the disk, causing data loss. For this reason, you use a proper shutdown with Linux, exactly the same as Windows.

Thousands of dual booters use NTFS for shared data without problems so long as they shutdown properly. If you create a file in Windows, you never have problems with the file name limitation. A file creation in Linux might reject your file name because of NTFS limitations.

Peter Linu Level 7
Posts: 1631 Joined: Sun Nov 11, 2018 8:24 pm Location: Sinny, Straya

Re: NTFS or Fat32 for data drive?

Post by Peter Linu » Fri May 28, 2021 8:40 pm

Naiive question to Petermint,
If I want to transfer some music (usually mp3) from my Mint to a friend’s iOS, it seems that exFAT on a USB drive is the only one that works on both. Isn’t that correct?

Cinnamon 21.1 Thinkpad T440p: 4 core i7-4712, 64bit, 16Gb RAM, 1Tb SSD, 2Tb HDD, 256Gb SATA M.2, VB w Win10 & Q4OS & LMDE-5 (32bit) / Cinnamon 21.1 Lenovo Y50-70 16Gb RAM 1Tb SSD, VB-Win10 / Q4os on RPi4b & Asus Atom (2011)

Re: NTFS or Fat32 for data drive?

Post by ThaCrip » Sat May 29, 2021 1:35 am

I think others have things pretty much covered, but ill add a small comment about NTFS. while it(read/write) works on Linux, file transfers are noticeably slower vs if your using EXT4 which gives you the full speed your hard drive is capable of (NOTE: EXT4 seems to be Linux equivalent to how Windows is with NTFS as it’s main file system). so in this regard opting for something else might not be a bad idea. but at the same time since you have to have Windows read/write access that pretty much excludes EXT4 and exFAT etc might be a decent alternative. but then again, if your not too concerned with transfer speeds (especially if you don’t do large transfers all that often), then NTFS still might be your all-around best bet since while it’s slower on Linux than EXT4 is, it’s not a huge gap.

but I think that for the most part if your storing files on SSD or HDD, NTFS or EXT4 is your best choice and since you must have Windows support, well then you obviously got to use NTFS. if it was a USB thumb drive than exFAT etc would probably be a good choice.

MainPC: i5-3550 (undervolted by -0.120v (CPU runs 12c cooler) /w stock i3-2120 hs/fan) | 1050 Ti 4GB | 16GB (2x 8GB) DDR3 1600Mhz RAM | Backups: AMD E-300 CPU (8GB RAM) / Athlon X2 3600+ CPU (@2.3GHz@1.35v) (4GB RAM) | All /w Mint 21.x-Xfce

Re: NTFS or Fat32 for data drive?

Post by RIH » Sat May 29, 2021 1:49 am

Matumi don’t forget to disable fast startup in Windows 10.
https://www.asus.com/support/FAQ/1045548/

If you don’t then you will find Linux unable to manipulate your data..

ricardogroetaers Level 6
Posts: 1334 Joined: Sat Oct 27, 2018 3:06 am Location: Rio de Janeiro, Brasil

Re: NTFS or Fat32 for data drive?

Post by ricardogroetaers » Sat May 29, 2021 8:02 am

Matumi wrote: ⤴ Wed May 26, 2021 10:11 am I want to put my data on an second internal SSD, which I want to access from Linux Mint 20.1 and also access from Windows.
Should I rather format it to NTFS or to FAT32?

By «data» I mean your personal files (texts, spreadsheets, music, movies, photos, presentations, projects, some program installation files (deb, exe, msi, . )).

Ntfs is a more modern file system with more functionality than fat32 (fat 32 LBA, of course, we are not going to use fat32 not LBA).

If you use Windows XP or later, ntfs is a good option.
But remember that the Linux fsck checker, so far, cannot check, let alone fix errors in the ntfs file system.
The Linux ntfsfix checker corrects some errors, but not all.
It is recommended to have Windows chkdsk and, consequently, to have Windows.

Fat32 LBA is compatible with almost any operating system since Windows 95 OSR2,5 (Win 95 C).
In Windows XP and later Microsoft placed a limit, I think, of 32 GB for formatting Fat32 volumes. If the volume already exists, there is no problem with reading and writing, only with formatting. This limitation did not exist in Win 95 C.
Any verifier, chkdsk or even the old scandisk and ndd (for DOS 32 bits and Windows) or Linux fsck support FAT32 LBA (verification and correction).
The problem is the maximum file size (4 GB).

The problem with Exfat is the large cluster size (128 KB) in volumes larger than 32 GB (which is common today).
It is not a good option for storing many small files.
For example, a small file of 2KB in size will occupy 128 KB of disk space just for it.
Linux fsck, so far, only checks for errors on exfat volumes but does not correct them.

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usb format ext4, ntfs, or fat32

Post by DAMIEN1307 » Sat Jun 10, 2017 11:09 am

hi folks. my question today is a 5 parter

part 1. to install lm18.1 on a computer to totally wipe out windbloes and just have lm18.1 ? ext4-ntfs-or-fat32 ?

part 2. to install lm18.1 on a computer to totally wipe out macintrash and just have lm18.1 ? ext4-ntfs-or-fat32 ?

part 3. to install lm18.1 on a computer for dual boot windbloes or macintrash and adding lm18.1 ? ext4-ntfs-or-fat32 ?

part 4. to install lm18.1 on a computer with an older version of only linux installed to totally wipe it out and install newest version ? ext4-ntfs-or-fat32 ?

part 5. to just always use fat32 at all times for all situations and when or if its advantagious to deviate from that for a given reason ?

thanks folks for reading. DAMIEN

Last edited by LockBot on Wed Dec 28, 2022 7:16 am, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Topic automatically closed 6 months after creation. New replies are no longer allowed.

Re: usb format ext4, ntfs, or fat32

Post by Schultz » Sat Jun 10, 2017 11:19 am

It’s always preferable to format your drive as ext4. With that said, here’s my opinion on your 5 different scenarios:

1-2: Go with ext4
3: If on your dual boot you want Windows to be able to read the files you have on Mint, use ntfs. I would highly recommend NOT to do this though.
4: Go with ext4
5: Not sure I understand this one. What would be the advantage to using FAT32?

Re: usb format ext4, ntfs, or fat32

Post by DAMIEN1307 » Sat Jun 10, 2017 11:25 am

hi schultz. i believe some have advocated fat32 due to certain boot issues from usb drive i do not as yet understand. DAMIEN

Re: usb format ext4, ntfs, or fat32

Post by Schultz » Sat Jun 10, 2017 11:40 am

I think I misunderstood your question. Are you asking what you should format your installation USB drive as? Or the computers on which you want to install Mint?

Re: usb format ext4, ntfs, or fat32

Post by DAMIEN1307 » Sat Jun 10, 2017 11:44 am

JerryF Level 16
Posts: 6082 Joined: Mon Jun 08, 2015 1:23 pm Location: Rhode Island, USA

Re: usb format ext4, ntfs, or fat32

Post by JerryF » Sat Jun 10, 2017 11:51 am

DAMIEN1307 wrote: .
part 5. to just always use fat32 at all times for all situations and when or if its advantagious to deviate from that for a given reason ?

thanks folks for reading. DAMIEN

Re: usb format ext4, ntfs, or fat32

Post by rene » Sat Jun 10, 2017 12:39 pm

You needn’t format them as anything. Formatting is the process of putting (empty, clean) filesystem structures on a drive; as soon you as you put the Mint ISO on it instead you overwrite any already present structures again. From a Linux installation, create a bootable Linux Mint USB simply with, e.g.,

sudo dd if=~/Downloads/linuxmint-18.1-cinnamon-64bit.iso of=/dev/sdz bs=4M

in which /dev/sdz is the USB stick. Unmount any from it mounted partitions first and use a sudo eject sdz for good measure afterwards. Won’t normally eject anything of course but will certainly synchronize things.

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