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I got myself a new drive today, so now I need to format and install
it. It's purpose in life will be storing files mostly for sharing on
the network at home.

I'm considering using ext2 under Windows which should give no
limitations under win xp, and give me the flexability to move it
straight into a linux system (either a computer or NAS box) at a later
date should I choose to do so by just plugging it in.

What i'm wondering is, is ext2ifs 100% safe (or at least as safe as
using NTFS under win xp) for reading and writing?
( http://www.fs-driver.org/ )
How would I go about formatting the drive without having to install
Linux bearing in mind it's a SATA drive sitting off a PCI card plugged
into a PC that doesn't have it's own SATA support on the motherboard?

On 29 Feb, 09:18, Craig Shore <craigsh...@paradise.net.nz> wrote:

> What i'm wondering is, is ext2ifs 100% safe (or at least as safe as
> using NTFS under win xp) for reading and writing?

ext2 is about as safe as VFAT. ext3 is about as safe as NTFS, as it
has journalling added to avoid file corruption on unclean shutdown
etc. ext3 is backwards compatible with ext2, so you can write to an
ext3 partition using ext2, but it will need a complete fsck next time
it is mounted as ext3 to rebuild the journal, so its only recommended
for occasional use.

On 2008-02-29, Craig Shore <> wrote:

> How would I go about formatting the drive without having to install
> Linux bearing in mind it's a SATA drive sitting off a PCI card plugged
> into a PC that doesn't have it's own SATA support on the motherboard?
>
Gparted is the short answer.

Grab a live CD with it on, boot up and follow the instructions on the
screen. No problem that MB has no SATA, the PCI card does this conversion.

The Rescue CD http://www.sysresccd.org/Main_Page has it on it. There is
also a smaller live CD with it alone on it.

The Rescue CD needs a startx command after it has booted up. Just going
gparted does not start the window display.

As always a partition tool is a weapon of mass data destruction. Do not use
when tired, drunk or in a hurry.

In article
<dc9e5df7-bc7f-472c-86a3->, Jason
Rumney did write:

> ext3 is backwards compatible with ext2, so you can write to an
> ext3 partition using ext2, but it will need a complete fsck next time
> it is mounted as ext3 to rebuild the journal ...

Given the volume was cleanly unmounted, why would the journal contain any
outstanding entries at all? In which case, why would you need a complete
fsck to rebuild it?

On 2 Mar, 00:03, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <l...@geek-
central.gen.new_zealand> wrote:

> Given the volume was cleanly unmounted, why would the journal contain any
> outstanding entries at all? In which case, why would you need a complete
> fsck to rebuild it?

There is no way of knowing whether the filesystem is consistent after
an ext2 mount without doing an fsck, as the journal was not written
to.

Jason Rumney wrote:
> On 2 Mar, 00:03, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <l...@geek-
> central.gen.new_zealand> wrote:
>
>> Given the volume was cleanly unmounted, why would the journal contain any
>> outstanding entries at all? In which case, why would you need a complete
>> fsck to rebuild it?
>
> There is no way of knowing whether the filesystem is consistent after
> an ext2 mount without doing an fsck, as the journal was not written
> to.
>
If an ext2/3 filesystem is unmounted cleanly, then it is marked as such
and doesn't need an fsck. That has nothing to do with the journal. The
journal should be empty if an ext3 filesystem is unmounted cleanly,
since all journal entries will be written out.

An ext2/3 file system will be checked if it has been mounted more than a
certain number of times, unless this is switched off. Which would be
silly, of course.

Cheers,

Cliff

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