Backup drive format suggestions?

[marek_online]

I've just got a nice new 1TB iomega drive for backups and I'm looking for suggestions as to which filesystem I should use with it.

I'll be backing up /home for the main, but the occasional system backup also.

My gut is to use ext3, which is what I still use by default for most of my partitions. Part of me thinks that being able to backup my wife's Windows machine might be a good thing to, but would formatting it fat32 lead to any drawbacks with the /home backup? (Permissions and so on?)

Any pointers appreciated.

[toad]

Re: Backup drive format suggestions?

Depends what you want to back up! Have a look at the wikipedia entry for file systems. Some are good for a lot of small files while others are ideally suited to stuff like dvd isos. It just depends on your needs.

Having said that, ext3 or ext4 work fine.

[kubicle]

Re: Backup drive format suggestions?

IMO the simplest solution is to create two partitions/filesystems on your back-up drive, one with a windows filesystem (fat/ntfs) for windows backups and one with a linux (POSIX) filesystem of your choice for your linux backups.

While you can write to fat (or ntfs) from linux, if you want to preserve permissions/ownerships, you'll have to use a backup system that will preserve these (like tar)...simple file copying will "forget" them.

There are also some tools for windows for writing to (some) ext filesystems, but I haven't used them so I can't really recommend them.

[Guest]

Re: Backup drive format suggestions?

Yes I agree ext3 and 4 and also with all that room you can save a few movies for boring nights