mkfs.ext3 or mkfs.msdos

[Karl Larsen]

James Gray wrote:
> On 09/09/2008, at 1:09 AM, Karl Larsen wrote:
>
>>    I am a sucker for memory sticks and have several. I got the bright
>> idea to make their file system ext3 since I have only one Windows and do
>> not use it much. But yesterday I had the need.
>
> Oh dear - not only is does it still use superblocks (which fry 
> specific sectors very quickly) it's journalling too.  I hope longevity 
> and speed weren't determinant factors in your decision to use ext3! ;)
>
>>    I got some URL data on this Ubuntu which I wanted to put on the
>> Windows in my laptop. I got the data on a memory stick from my Ubuntu
>> but when I plugged into Windows it upchucked and displayed nothing :-)
>
> You want Ext2FS for Windows.  Punching "ext3 +windows" (sans quotes) 
> into google yeids the site you need as the first hit.  Google is your 
> friend ;)  To save you the exercise, and for the archives, here is the 
> site:
> http://www.fs-driver.org/
>
> Voila - read and write support for ext2/3 under Windows.  I've used 
> this driver on all 32bit non-Vista Windows systems (from Win2K and up) 
> and it works perfectly.  In fact in a previous job I had a Win2K/SuSE 
> dual boot system with an ext2 shared partition that held VMware images 
> I demo'ed in each OS.  No problems.  I've also used it without any 
> stability problems on Windows servers when porting/moving data from Linux.
    Sounds like it was written for VMware use :-)


>
>
> FWIW, you might want to do a little research into filesystems on flash 
> media as some (like ext2/3) are not particular "nice" to them when you 
> considered the finite write cycles.  Superblocks really aren't very 
> friendly to flash media, and to date, there aren't any filesystems 
> (that I've seen anyway) that have a wide compatibility base and 
> designed specifically for use on flash drives.
    Is ext3 more or less a FAT type file system? I can see where the 
constant reference to the table would wear out the flash media there.
>
> Cheers,
>
> James
    Well James they seem to come from the factory with a FAT file 
system. Odd but this seems to work with Linux which is used to ext2/3. 
But as pointed out the FAT is not a very good file system, but used by 
Microsoft from 1985 about.

    I went to man mkfs and found it will make a mkfs.msdos so I used 
that and it works fine. It is covered at man mkfs.msdos and there it 
explains that DOS is a FAT but it has small FAT's which could be a 
problem. There is a switch to get a 32 bit FAT.

    Also the man page says that mkfs.msdos cannot make a bootable file 
system. This being the case, why does it, or how does it work?

Karl

-- 

	Karl F. Larsen, AKA K5DI
	Linux User
	#450462   http://counter.li.org.
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