How robust is NTFS-3G ?

I just installed NTFS-3G, and I want to use it for writing to external 2.5" drives, for backing up etc.
The wikipedia article says that journalling is not fully completed yet, so power loss can lead to an incosnistent file system.

So, would you not recomment using NTFS-3G for writing to external 2.5" drives; or say bittorrenting to the external HDD ?

 

Works fine with me. I hate how finicky it is if you don't eject the drives or shutdown the computer properly while in Windows but other than that I haven't suffered any data loss...

 

Can you elaborate ? You mean ntfs-3g does not work properly if the drive had not been originally unmounted cleanly in windows ?
And what exactly does it do when being finicky ?

 

I meant finicky as it won't mount drives coming from a hibernated windows, it won't mount drives that come from a computer that has be uncleanl shutdown. You have to force mount the drive in those conditions to be able to use it or go back on windows and use eject. Though sometimes it doesn't say anything even though I didn't use eject.

 

How do you do a force mount ?

 

you could put option force in mount command, for example,

Code:

 mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sdaX /mnt/Widows [B]-o force[/B]

or you could just in /etc/fstab; that would do it as well

 

you can also install ntfs-config from the repos to automagically set your ntfs drives to mount at boot....but like ayle said, you can force a mount no problem if there is an unclean shutdown...I've found it very reliable. Laptops with an inline battery pretty much remove the scare of a power failure.

 

I'm more concerned about using it on external drives, and the possibility of a screwup due to USB issue...

 

It won't screw up. It just gets mad if the drives haven't been "Safely Removed" from Windows before trying to use them in Linux. As long as you always unmount external drives properly, you shouldn't have any issues.

 

A little tip: if you create a symlink between /sbin/mount.ntfs-3g and /sbin/mount.ntfs, you won't have to provide -t ntfs-3g during mounting.

 

Thanks.

I actually like giving the ntfs-3g option explicitly. That way, if I'm just reading some external drive, I can use the regular old ntfs read only module

 

That's always such a PIA.

 

Anyone have any problems with drives that were not cleanly unmounted ? Force mount not work ? Force mount messed up the filesystem ?

 

The recommendation of force mounting a volume that was just unplugged from a Windows system has never worked for me. On the bright side, I've never had any filesystem or data integrity issues under Linux (ext3, rieserFS, XFS, NTFS).

 

So what do you do then ?

Also, is there a problem in Linux if the computer drops the USB connection for an NTFS drive, while in linux ?

 

I have forced a lot of unclean NTFS partitions to mount with NTFS-3g, and haven't had any problems.

 

I'm forced to "Safely Remove" the volume with a Windows machine.

 

so have I'm...I just a dirty shutdown kinda guy seriously, isn't that a windows thing to try and prevent you pulling the drive before it's down writing? IOW, BS?

 

I have had a problem mounting a window created ntfs partition in linux. It only occurs when I have a dirty shut down or get to the windows loading screen and restart a couple times and it's the point where windows will ask how you want to boot something like the advanced startup options. I think I have done a forced mount before but you can always restart windows and shut down correctly. The other ntfs-3g experience is when I have used partimage to successfully clone a ntfs drive and reload the image to a hard drive and windows has worked perfectly. That's my 2¢

 

It's actually more of a Linux thing. External drives aren't mounted synchronously by default in many distros, which means that if you unplug the drive without unmounting it data could be left unwritten to the drive, leaving the filesystem in a bad state. The Safely Remove in Windows does the same thing... just flushes the buffers. Really, it's only two, maybe three clicks to safely remove a USB drive under Windows or Linux. It's worth it to keep your filesystems clean. You won't believe me until you have a filesystem get hosed on an external drive, though

 

Crap pitabred. So then would you only recommend ext3 on external drive as they have a journal and recover better from an accidental disconnect (say due to USB problems )?

 

No. I'm just saying do everything in your power to unmount the drives cleanly when you can under Windows or Linux, and you are much less likely to experience sadness It doesn't matter what filesystem you use, you will eventually have issues if you don't cleanly remove drives. If you will never, ever, ever, EVER have anyone try to use the drive under OSX or Windows, then EXT3 is fine. Otherwise, NTFS is your best bet as it's the most cross-platform filesystem currently. Mostly because of Windows' lock-in.

 

Gotcha

BTW, is there a plugin/module to read ext3 on windows ?

 

^^ --> http://www.fs-driver.org/
ext2 IFS driver for Windows.
ext2+ext3 support, no ext4 yet.
Capability for both read & write; however usually when I see people chatting about it, the suggestion is quite strong to avoid using it as much as possible, and only use it to read and not write if you need to.

 

Ext2 drive under Windows won't work with driver signing though. Otherwise, its pretty good, but it can't enforce file permissions of Linux, so avoid using it when you can.