Which File System to use?

[DutchGeek]

Hi I have two harddisks one 80 GB and one 40 and i have win 2000, xp, me, xp sp2, suse 9.3 reiserfs.
Do you think guys that reiserfs best suits me, and in case not what FS do you recommend me?

--thanks

[gore]

This is the same as asking "Should I learn how to take a car apart?" IT DEPENDS... You seem very new so I'd say leave it. ReiserFS is a journaling FS meaning if the power goes out or you hit the power button you won't lose things so easily.

I highly recommend that you read the books that SUSE 9.3 comes with. If you didn't pay for it, buy a copy of SUSE, and read the books.

If you don't have money, look in the screen and find a little Red and White ringed life raft looking symbol with a lizard face (In KDE) and click on it. It's on the bottom left portion of the screen. Click, read.

[DutchGeek]

OK, but before i installed reiserfs i installed fedora on a ext2 fs and it was fine, later i bought suse 9.3 and used reiserfs because i heard its best for smaller hdd and its new, but it corrupted all my harddisk! I cannot resize and/or remove , format partitions in the harddisk.

-thanks

[nihil]

Gore is the expert here, and I am a mere apprentice

If you want to run XP and 2000 I would suggest that you have an NTFS partition.

Why do you want Win ME? If it is for academic/study purposes then I would suggest that Win98SE is a better option. You will need a FAT32 partition for that.

If you are studying/comparing operating systems, then I believe that you should use their preferred file system to get valid results.

Just my thoughts

[gore]

How did it corrupt your HD? resizing and things like that with Reiser take some work because it wasn't designed to be moved around a lot. You can of course easily remove and format, see reiserFS is a lot different from Ext2 and Ext3.

Ext2 is the old Linux File System. It'd old, and for the most part stable. But it's not a journaling system. So if the power goes out or the power is shut off without shutting down, you can't get back any data you lose. Ext3 is the same thing but journaled. If the power goes out it can replay the journal.

ReiserFS is a whole new idea all the way. It's what I use on every box here except the 3 machines that have Windows, which I use NTFS on, and my BSD boxes use BSDFFS.

Even both my slackware machines are using ReiserFS. For most home users and even server tasks, it's WAY faster than Ext3, and the journal itself seems to be all around better. I know, I've tested it, one of my slackware machines, I don't shut it down, I just hit the power button. So far no problems, and that machine has TWO HDs, with TWO mount points. If I'd used Ext file systems I'd be reinstalling.

Now why would you want to remove any file system? You don't need to resize, as that has more to do with good planning than technical know how. You should probably try to do something like this:

When you prepair to install an OS, write down what it is you want it to do, what file systems you want to make, where, and how big. This way you don't need to resize. And any free space, make that a Fat16 File System. This way if you need to add space to another OS you can just use that and format it as NTFS or Reiser or whatever.

Now reply here and tell me how exactly it corrupted.... I'd like to hear that one.

To delete partitions like for example if you wnated to remove an OS.... That's simply, use YAST, or if you're doing it in Windows use Partition Magic, or if you are in Linux and don't have X Loaded, just use cfdisk.

[@tt!tud3]

Originally posted here by DutchGeek
Hi I have two harddisks one 80 GB and one 40 and i have win 2000, xp, me, xp sp2, suse 9.3 reiserfs.
Do you think guys that reiserfs best suits me, and in case not what FS do you recommend me?

--thanks

I don't get the questions... is there a way that you can explain this better? I'll be glad to help but I'm afraid that I don't quite get what you are trying to say.


as Nihil said... GORE is expert on this...

[DutchGeek]

nihil: i know that ntfs is better than fat32, space saving etc. but i chose fat32 to have read and write abilities on it in linux. and im not getting any use of win Me it`s corrupted and i dont work on it, but i cant uninstall it because the harddisk is corrupted.
gore: i mean that when i open up partition magic it says that all the 40 GB hdd is BAD, no abilities to resize and/or remove or anything or even see the partitions, although im now using the harddisk for linux and win xp and no prob. the only thing is i cant is resize and/or remove paritions or i`ll have to remove all partitions and start from scratch. I want to increase size of linux partition (6GB only) and remove some empty partitions used for backup

[DutchGeek]

@tt!tud3: my question is that im having problem in resize and/or remove partitions on the 40GB one although no "feeled" problems during using it, and whether reiserfs is the problem.

[gore]

I bet you didn't read the partition magic book. Because it points out somewhere in there that anything you use other than Ext2 and maybe Ext3 won't allow it to move things. Your best bet is probably to do a complete back up, reformat and reinstall everything and mark this one up to lessons learned.

[@tt!tud3]

I think we need to know Exactly what you want to do.

What Partitions do you have that you don't want anymore?

What OS or OSs do you want to keep?