which format for external harddrive

i have an external hard drive but i dont know which type of format to use on the drive, i want to use fat so it can be like a big flash drive that i can use in linux and windows, but i think that windows has a problem with a FAT over 32gb so what would be the best format to use?

also the reason i dont want to use ntfs is because i formatted my other external hard drive ntfs and out of the blue linux couldnt write to it i tried chaning the permissions in root and everything but i couldn't get it to rwx it can only read it
thanks
-Epotn

Most of Linux distros don't support NTFS wirte access out of box. You have to install ntfs-3g package to enable NTFS write access. ntfs-3g is stable and I haven't faced any problem with till now.

Go for NTFS only. Btw, which Linux distro are you using?

im using opensuse 10.2 it support ntfs right out of the box but ive had problems like i said above that it wont let me write to it thats why i wanted to go with another format

You have to setup user permissions only.
Have you tried setting usmask value to zero?

Code:

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mount -t ntfs-3g  /dev/<partition>  <mount_point> -o defaults,umask=0

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I never had any problem with NTFS read/write access or permissions.

yea opensuse already has ntfs support, but with a distro that doesnt out of the box support ntfs isnt it annoying to have to always

Code:

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mount ntfs-3g /media/external

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Edit /etc/fstab file and add an entry for external media. You wont have to execute that command again.

Hello everybody I am new to the forums

I have encountered a similair problem with my external drive(Maxtor 3200 500GB). I wanted to use it both on Windows and Mandrivia 2008. However I was not able to write to the drive. I tried changing the permissions, but that i got a pop up saying that changing permissions was restricted/impossible. I serched the formus here and somebody mentioned that ext.3 works on both Linux and Windows, so I formatted the external and created one partition in ext.3. Now Windows Xp did not even recognize the drive. So naturally came back and saw this thread.

Now I need to reformat the external in ntfs, however Mandrivia allows me to format it in ntfs-3g. Now the question is which one should I choose. I would prefferably like ntfs and then just use ntfs package on Linux and the external should work flawlessly on Windows and Linux alike.? Am I correct?

Also I don't know what mount point to set up when formatting the external. I want it to be recognized as a removable external hard drive. Right now the default mount point is set to /usr. Should I change it to /media?

Alright now it seems to work. I installed ntfs-3g, and the drive is recognized. However I am unable to write anything on it because I don't have the permissions to do that. Can anybody help me out?

I tried doing this:

Code:

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# mount -t ntfs-3g  /dev/sda1  /media/ -o defaults,umask=0

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And in response I got this

Code:

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fuse: mount failed: Device or resource busy
FUSE mount point creation failed
Unmounting /dev/sda1 ()

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Edit:

Alright now everything seems to work, however I can only access the external when I am signed on as a root. Is there a way to change that?

Edit#2:

I have tried unmounting the drive through the "Savely Remove", that did not work,so I just unplugged the usb cable. After I plugged it back in and I tried accessing the external I got this message:

HTML Code:

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Cannot obtain lock on /media/.hal-mtab

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