Moving my music to linux...

[einstein1486]

ive recently converted an older desktop PC over to linux (ubuntu) and have had no problem using it for day to day activities like internet, email, and chat but i have yet to try to use it as a jukebox for my music as well. i have over 10,000 songs on an external HD which is beyond cluttered and is starting to reach max capacity, so ive decided to format and give it a chance on the linux box.

the only thing holding me back right now is the filesystem... as far as ive heard, Linux isnt a big fan of NTFS- it can usually access the files, but has trouble writing new files or manipulating them in any way. FAT32 seems to be the obvious choice, but then again Windows XP will only format drives to NTFS and FAT32 is limited to 32GB partitions. i want to be able to read and write files to the drive from both linux and XP PCs, and im not sure what the best course of action would be.

any advice or info is welcome... thanks.

[Dapper Dan]

Usr the Gparted live cd to partition and format your external drive to one fat32 partition alongside an ntfs partition. Record files to the fat32 partitions from Linux or Windows, then move them over from fat32 to the ntfs partition while in Windows, (NOT from Linux!). Then you can listen to music on your ntfs partition from Linux without having to write to it and from Windows too.

[AndrewB]

You could also format the drive as ext2 or ext3. And keep a small fat32 or ntfs partition and use this to read it on windows. Put the program on the small partition so you always have it.

[bidi]

OR.... you could format it ext2/3 and read from Windows XP using this driver:
http://www.fs-driver.org/

I've never tried it myself so I can't give you a first hand review, but it seems like good!

[Zelmo]

OR.... you could format it ext2/3 and read from Windows XP using this driver:
http://www.fs-driver.org/

I've never tried it myself so I can't give you a first hand review, but it seems like good!

I did this to convert my shared storage drive after MythTV had problems writing large files to vfat, which was what the filesystem used to be. It has worked perfectly since I converted it in February (not that I've done extensive testing from Windows, but it hasn't had any problems).