Re: [tlug] dual boot - Windows/Linux

["Greg Thomson " <gregt@example.com>]

On Sat, 29 Sep 2007 11:55:25 +0900, Keith Bawden <keith@example.com> wrote:

> The problem could be that when Windows (or the driver or whatever)
> crashes you may be left with data corruption and will need to "try"
> and repair it under Linux.  A much harder thing to do than if it were
> mounted as an ext3 volume all along. One of the reasons why ext3 is
> better than ext2 is it's resistance to data corruption in such
> situations.
> So I suppose what I'm trying to say is if you entrust your data to
> ext2 then fair enough; if you then want to entrust that data to ext2
> on Windows then fair enough. I would ensure the data is backed up on a
> more regular basis than usual or the data is expendable.

I think backing up data is important no matter what file system is used.
My point is that mounting a linux file system from windows is one more
option to consider when sharing data directly (1) between windows and linux
on a dual boot machine. The normal choices are mounting FAT32 or NTFS from
linux. FAT32 has issues with large files and write support to NTFS may have
issues too. (I think this is getting better though.) There are trade offs
either way.

It would be nice if windows had native support for EXT3 but I can't see MS
implementing that any time soon.

Here's another little article from Linux Journal that looks at the problem.
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/9449
In this article they remind us that the specs for proprietary
file systems like NTFS are not known to the public where as EXT2/3 etc.  
are open.
It would appear that adding support for other file systems in windows may  
be easier
and more reliably done than hacking on the NTFS. Power to the NTFS  
hackers! They have a hard job.

(1) Via a partition on the machines internal hard disk or an external USB  
disk.

Greg.

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