Hey guys,
I want to save my important data, photos and videos on an external HDD. It should last many years and I’m not editing things on there often, just copy new photos on there from time to time for the most part.
Previously I used Windows where all my external drives were NTFS. But since I made the switch to KDE Linux I’m not sure if NTFS is still the best option for it or if I should rather use exFAT, EXT4, BTRFS or something completely different for this use case 
Thanks in advance!
Ext4 if you want reliability and speed, btrfs if you want compression. exFat if you want compatibility with Windoze.
unless you are still using windows, i would avoid NTFS because when it needs repairs (which seems to be often) you really need windows to fix it… the linux tools are not sufficient.
if you are committed to linux and always have at least one live USB laying around, then just use ext4 and you will always be able to get to those files.
Depending on the use case and the compatibility requirement, extFat would be the most compatible. Most smart TVs support it and all OSes support reading and writing to it.
You are going to be better off for external data drives with EXT4.
haven’t tried this but what happens when you try to write linux file names to exFAT?
does it create the same potential to corrupt the file system as with NTFS?
Not the same type of issues for a linux user. Also, not sure what you mean by Linux File Names. My main desktop is Linux and I do sync some of my files to Windows & Mac. However, 90% of my work is on my Linux desktop.
extFat - we might face issues of compatibility between Android & Linux - since there might be small implementation changes, however, if you unmount the FS properly from both Linux and Android, there shouldnt be “dirty bit” issue, where you have to run fsck on it.
NTFS - Too many issues on Linux - file names, file permissions, mount / unmount locks. Too painful.
I have a 1 TB SSD formatted on Android, which I connect to my Linux desktop without issues.
I tried using KDE Connect, but it is not very reliable for copying files - large number or large size. Dolphin someimtes hangs, when i try to connect to my phone.
So, external storage is easy.
Example - USB - 32 GB.
linux allows more characters in file names than NTFS which can cause issues if files with those names are written to an NTFS drive.
my question was doe exFAT have the same limitations on file names and what happens to that file system when banned characters are used in a file name?
Ah! that – yes, they have the same limitations as NTFS - special characters, filename size, etc.
Okay.
And I need to transfer files from a NTFS hard drive to the new EXT4(?) hard drive. Can I do that without issues in KDE Linux?
to move the files i would use rsync or one of the many GUI front ends to rsync like luckybackup.
Why not just copy and paste?
i assume we are talking about a lot of files.
copy/paste is for single files to a handful of files, not entire disks worth of files.
Are you planning to only use it with only Linux machines? Then EXT4 or BTRFS.
Which one?
In all cases, if the data is important, make sure there’s more than one copy of it. If your intention is to store important data on an external disk, consider getting a mirrored RAID enclosure, or a second disk you can use to back up the first.
(Yes, I know RAID isn’t backup, but it’s better than nothing!)
I switched all my laptop and pc to Linux, so there are no Windows devices left
The current setup is that all important data and photos are saved on two 1TB HDDs (NTFS), so if one fails I still have all the data.
But since the drives are full now, I bought a new 2TB HDD.
So in the future the data will be on both the new 2TB drive as well as spread across the two old 1TB drives.
Make sure you have a backup of what’s on the new 2TB drive then!
Even for these drives, worth thinking about offsite backup (either a cloud service, or keep on of the drives at a different location.)
That is my setup but with two 20tb and now 2 8tb drives. I use FreeFileSync every couple of days to mirror from 1 of the 20tb and 1 of the 8tb to the other drives. I’m assuming you mean the data on the 2tb is split between the 2 1tb’s rather than the 2 1tb’s being as they were before you bought the new drive.
That is correct.
Can anyone recommend FreeFileSync or another Flatpak for copying all the data?
I prefer to have a GUI
Haven’t used this personally, but it seems like it’s a pretty simple GUI frontend around rsync:
