I’ll be storing my music, videos, and backup documents. What would be the best file system to use? I have Gparted up and ready, I was leaning towards fat32. But I thought I’d seek opinions here.
Suggestions? Benefits of any that Gparted offers?
EDIT: I found this…
exFAT is the successor to FAT32, and addresses FAT32’s biggest limitations: file and drive sizes. FAT32 can’t handle partitions larger than 8TB, or files larger than 4GB, whereas exFAT can handle files and partitions up to 128 petabytes, which is 128,000 terabytes.
Since I have several 4k concert videos larger than 4GB, I may just go exFAT.
I’d personally just use NTFS if I wanted multi os compatability (Windows/Linux), and EXT4 if it’s Linux only. I haven’t used exFAT much myself so it probably is good for your needs.
For a simple formats there are no advantages I can think of that GParted has over your Desktop Environments default disk/partition software.
Edit: I misread - Can’t think of benefits of other filesystems.
If you don’t need compatibility with Windows, ext4 is a way better filesystem than exFAT in my opinion.
ext4 is a journaling file system, which can help prevent data corruption in the event of a crash or power failure. It’s generally more reliable for data integrity than a non-journaling filesystem like exFAT.
ext4 also has better performance and more advanced features compared to exFAT. You get faster file access and improved read/write speeds, especially with large files. ext4 supports extents and delayed allocation, which can improve performance and reduce fragmentation.
ext4 supports encryption through LUKS or fscrypt, where exFAT does not natively support encryption (you would need to use third-party tools to encrypt exFAT drives).
ext4 supports Linux file permissions and ACLs, while exFAT does not. For example, chown doesn’t work with exFAT; all users have the same access to all files and directories on an exFAT volume.
In general, ext4 will have better performance, reliability, and compatibility with Linux than a Microsoft filesystem like exFAT.
If it’s being used as an internal drive as this appears to be, 100%
The only time I wouldn’t use ext4 is if it’s an external drive - while any computer I own that I plug it into is going to be fine, there may be the odd occasion I need to take the drive somewhere else and plug it in to whatever I find there, and there’s a very good chance that’s going to be a Windows machine in which case exFAT has me covered at both ends
I recommend btrfs. It is the most advanced file system. I uses COW, transparent compression, bit-rotting is not an issue and once you notice how great and useful snapshotting is you will stick with it.
