Maxtor USB disk drive; any downsides for formatting NTFS?

[Al Dykes]

I have a 250MB Maxtor One-Touch (250BG) and it's being repurposed. It
came from the factory as FAT32 and it ws never reformatted. CHKDSK
says it's fine. It's used as a backup device with PC softare that
chuncks up data 2GB at a time.

I would prefer to use NTFS and single big files as savesets but want a
consensus of opinion about the change.

I like NTFS becuase it is damn robust and the cases where, in my
experience, data has been lost due to NTFS when the hardware was OK
can be counted on one finger. I use NTFS whenever possible and have
done so on a few thousand systems, since NT3.51.

I see .CHK files on most well used PCs that use FAT32. I don't find
that acceptable.

OTOH, in the couple years since USB external disks have become popular
I've been watching Usenet groups and seeing *many* reports of problems
with NTFS on USB disks. The "delayed write" error seems to be
popular. I attribute this to NTFS buffering and journaling.


Comments?

(I aslo don't like external drives for heat reasons, but an hour a day
is OK.)

 

[Todd H.]

I have a 250MB Maxtor One-Touch (250BG) and it's being repurposed.

Repurposed? Did management get hold of you? Sounds like a marine
mammal procreating. Actually that would be reporpoising... Hrmm.
I digress.

I would prefer to use NTFS and single big files as savesets but want a
consensus of opinion about the change.

Depends on the OS's you use. If you always use the drive in win2k/xp
machines go for it, it's a better filesystem.

If you have to talk with Linux systems or win95 systems, though, the
drive won't be readable.

Always stopping the drive before disconnecting it is important,
regardless.

 

[Rod Speed]

I have a 250MB Maxtor One-Touch (250BG) and it's being
repurposed. It came from the factory as FAT32 and it ws
never reformatted. CHKDSK says it's fine. It's used as a backup
device with PC softare that chuncks up data 2GB at a time.

I would prefer to use NTFS and single big files as savesets
but want a consensus of opinion about the change.

I like NTFS becuase it is damn robust and the cases where, in my
experience, data has been lost due to NTFS when the hardware was
OK can be counted on one finger. I use NTFS whenever possible
and have done so on a few thousand systems, since NT3.51.

Its more complicated than that in practice. You do see a number
of reports of NTFS systems that get reported as unformatted.

It appears that most of the time that that is due to XP being too
fussy and that when that happens, knoppix etc is happy to mount it.

I see .CHK files on most well used PCs that use FAT32.
I don't find that acceptable.

OK, but having the system say that the drive is unformatted isnt either.

OTOH, in the couple years since USB external disks have become
popular I've been watching Usenet groups and seeing *many* reports
of problems with NTFS on USB disks. The "delayed write" error
seems to be popular. I attribute this to NTFS buffering and journaling.

That last is unlikely. That wont produce that particular error. Its due to a
hardware problem, at the interface level. Nothing to do with the file system.

Comments?

(I aslo don't like external drives for heat reasons,

Yeah, I prefer to have the drive network connected instead
and have them in normal cases where they can be cooled
properly and you can see the SMART data easily etc.

That last is easily fixed by using eSATA instead of USB2 or firewire.

but an hour a day is OK.)

Particularly if you use a drive that runs cool like the Samsungs as
well and ensure that the case is one of the better designed ones.

 

[Rod Speed]

(e-mail address removed) (Al Dykes) writes

Depends on the OS's you use. If you always use the drive
in win2k/xp machines go for it, it's a better filesystem.

But has some downsides.

If you have to talk with Linux systems or win95
systems, though, the drive won't be readable.

Most modern linuxes can read ntfs volumes fine.

The problem is with writing to them.

 

[Arno Wagner]

I have a 250MB Maxtor One-Touch (250BG) and it's being repurposed. It
came from the factory as FAT32 and it ws never reformatted. CHKDSK
says it's fine. It's used as a backup device with PC softare that
chuncks up data 2GB at a time.

I would prefer to use NTFS and single big files as savesets but want a
consensus of opinion about the change.

I like NTFS becuase it is damn robust and the cases where, in my
experience, data has been lost due to NTFS when the hardware was OK
can be counted on one finger. I use NTFS whenever possible and have
done so on a few thousand systems, since NT3.51.

I see .CHK files on most well used PCs that use FAT32. I don't find
that acceptable.

OTOH, in the couple years since USB external disks have become popular
I've been watching Usenet groups and seeing *many* reports of problems
with NTFS on USB disks. The "delayed write" error seems to be
popular. I attribute this to NTFS buffering and journaling.


(I aslo don't like external drives for heat reasons, but an hour a day
is OK.)

The only reason not to use NTFS I see is problems with Linux. Done I do
all my backups with Linux, all my XP stuff (games mostly) are on FAT32.

Besides that, do you really want to use a known to die young external
Maxtor disk? These are very badly cooled and Maxtor HDDs really need
to be cooled well in order to be reliable...

Arno