NTFS or ext4 for my Simple NAS?

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rbscairns
rbscairns's picture
NTFS or ext4 for my Simple NAS?

I recently set up a simple NAS arrangement with my WNR3500L servicing both Win XP and Linux computers on my network. SAMBA is enabled.

My NAS 320GB HDD is currently formatted NTFS and all is working well.

I have been doing some research (to the best of my non-technical ability) and it would appear the reformatting my NAS HDD from NTFS to ext4 may offer advantages over NTFS like:

  • Using less disk space for the same size file.
  • Faster read/write to and from the HDD.
  • Much less file fragmentation.

Am I thinking along the right lines or am I missing something?

Reformatting my NAS does not present any problem for me.

Striatum
Striatum's picture
You should clearly use ext

You should clearly use ext file system as it is a native linux filesystem, so read/write access is faster than ntfs access (use a third party driver).

The only concern is that I don't think ext4 is supported right now by dd-wrt/tomato ? You can use ext3 without problem.

See here:
http://www.dd-wrt.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=76409&sid=e16c21a7ad5ad90ab...

It seems that via optware you could install the ext4 module, but some report that it is buggy.

Ext3 is very stable, journalized, so use it! (more fragmentation than with ext4 but considerably less than ntfs).

rbscairns
rbscairns's picture
Thank you Striatum. Just the

Thank you Striatum. Just the information that I needed.

File fragmentation was my main concern. I will be backing up my NAS HDD tomorrow so that will be the best time to reformat it to ext3 (after backing up).

haylee
haylee's picture
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recommend some tv shows

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Chuck DVD 1-3
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