Quick "Hi" and a little doubt.

Rover

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Hello, (Linux) world.
I just arrived, and I'd thank if anyone can help me with which filesystem to format my external hd and, in fact, how to do it, because I thought of ext4 and it seems it's not preinstaled in my SO (currently Mageia, thinking about going to Debian, any advice on this too, btw?).

I'm really new at this (know python and not much more), even I'll be soon studying computer science at college, and there's some things I'd like to store aside, so before I started reading almost everything it comes to me and find around the net I thought about asking for some advice and guide to solve immediate issues on storage.

So, I think that's all, if anyone have some guideline, docs or literally anything that thinks could help on my learning, I'd be more than thankful, and just want to say that this kind of community raises the value of everything it's been done to get here.

See you around c:
 


Welcome @Rover! If the external drive is just for storage, it might be best to use the Windows file system, NTFS, since it would be compatible with both Windows and Linux. You may need compatibility with both in school.

Cheers
 
Is NTFS max file size 16TB? Just took a look on it and it seems so, but something makes me feel like I read otherwise, that was the main reason I didn't already formatted it that way.
Thank you :)

Edit: Also taking a look on the guide, it might be handy, thanks again (I might thank a lot)
Edit2: Already done it to NTFS! Thank you (again).
(Do I have to close the thread or something?)
 
Last edited:
Do you need a file larger than 16TB? Not GB now... TB! Do you think you have enough RAM to open, manipulate, and save files of that size?:eek::eek::eek:

And still, it seems larger is possible, but you have to force changes in the cluster size of the drive. This Microsoft link shows you can get up to a 256TB file size limit by using the maximum available cluster size. Note that this article only applies to Windows 10 and various server editions... not Win 7/8 or others. This may be an "enhanced" NTFS being described.

Honestly, I wouldn't recommend trying to change the cluster sizes, unless just to experiment with the theory. I have no idea whether Linux would also support those same cluster and file size values, but it might. I can't really find any info on that.

Cheers
 
No, I meant something made me think the file cap was quite much lower ('bout 4GB), which would be a problem, I asked if it's 16TB because saw it in a quick search and wanted to be sure, since it will be more than enough if that's the case.
 
Ha ha... okay, you had me going there! :D But yes, 16TB is the "default limit" for NTFS files.

The 4GB limit is on FAT32. That would also be very compatible between Windows and Linux on your external drive, but it's one of the reasons that I suggested NTFS instead.

Cheers
 
All fine, then, I might have been "fusing" FAT32 and NTFS in my mind, or the misunderstanding could be coming from it, since both are Windows formats (shame edit: I did researched this few years ago, this time couldn't really find anything about it and was a bit confused).

Thank you all, everything solved♥
 

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