Sharing files between Ubuntu 6.06 and Windows XP Pro - best disk format to use

[Eric Dunbar]

On 04/02/07, Felipe Alfaro Solana <felipe.alfaro at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 2/4/07, Ouattara Oumar Aziz <wattazoum at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Felipe Alfaro Solana a écrit :
> > > On 2/4/07, Yagnesh Desai <ynd at lntenc.com> wrote:
> > >> Eric;
> > >>
> > >> The most reliable option is to use the FAT32 file format.
> > >> I am using it this way on my LAPTOP.
> > >
> > > I guess that you mean "the easiest". FAT is anything but reliable.
> > >
> > Please, tell us why you think FAT isn't reliable.
>
> It's patented,

Ideological. Doesn't have a direct bearing on reliability (and, any
philosophical responses really belong on sounder).

> doesn't support transactions/atomic operations, uses an
> antiquated and obsolete method to store metadata with very simple
> redundancy (first FAT copy, second FAT copy), doesn't support
> permissions./ACLs, maximum file size is limited to 4GB, its get
> fragmented easily, tends to destroy the first few blocks of Flash/NAND
> memories since the FAT table is stored at the very beginning of the
> disk, etc.
>
> Other than that, FAT works pretty well for floppy disks, USB keys and
> really small hard disks. For something, I would use a modern
> filesystem.

The unfortunate thing (that I've managed to discover in my readings)
is that it's the only file system that's got robust ("native") support
by both Linux and Windows. NTFS, though superior to FAT is not fully
supported by Linux yet nor is ext3fs supported natively by Windows.