Donald Grayson wrote:
Doug McGarrett wrote:
I will shortly receive SuSE 9.1. Assuming it allows me to choose between Reiser and Ext3 file systems, which should I choose, and why? (It would be useful to be able to access the Linux system files from Win XP, on the NTFS, if that can be done, and even more so, the reverse--i.e., access NTFS files from Linux.) I am not currently sharing my XP system with any other OS, so this will be a new installation in all respects. All comments and observations gratefully received.
--doug
Myself, I prefer ReiserFS. It's the default choice with a SuSE install and I've had no trouble with it. For the average home user, I really don't think it matters which filesystem you use, it's only an issue if you're dealing with legacy data on already formatted drives or if you're running certain applications in high traffic environments.
As to viewing ReiserFS or EXT3 in Windows. Well, Windows will at best ignore them, at worst it will show the partitions in my computer as unformatted discs and suggest reformatting them with NTFS. NTFS drives can be read under Linux, but not written to.
Personally, I use a 20GB USB hard drive formatted with FAT32 to share data between Windows and Linux on a dual boot system.
If you are interested in reading your linux partitions from Windows then you should go with EXT3. The reason is it is backwards compatible with ext2 and there are several ext2 filesystem drivers for Windows. A quick google found this: http://ashedel.chat.ru/ext2fsnt/ Having said that I find the performance of Reiser much better than ext[23]. Mike