[Semibug] NTFS usb HDD and OpenBSD

[Kyle Willett]

Hi Jonathan,

It shouldn't matter what format the drive comes in.  As long as the
computers in question have ports to connect it via USB 2/3/4, SATA, eSATA,
all should work.  The only thing that might not work is a thunderbolt drive
but even that should work because it is essentially also a USB 3 or 4 drive.

It doesn't matter what format the drive comes in software wise too.  exFAT
and NTFS are common as are unformated drives.

You are right that NTFS is a poor choice for a BSD and Linux drive.  Fat32
is the best for compatibility but has a lot of disadvantages in max file
size and volume size.  Ext2 is then your best bet being supported by all
*BSDs and Linux in read and write mode.

Hope that helps sir,
Kyle

On Sat, May 25, 2024 at 12:46 PM Jonathan Drews <jondrews at fastmail.com>
wrote:

> I need to buy new external USB hard drives to do backups, for my
> OpenBSD laptop. Are most of the portable hard drives fornatted in
> NTFS? If so, I read the following in the OpenBSD man pages:
>
> From man (8) mount_ntfs
>
> "The supported NTFS versions include both NTFS4, as used by Microsoft
> Windows NT 4.0, and NTFS5, as used by Microsoft Windows 2000 and
> XP.
> Only read-only operation is permitted, which is automatically
> enforced."
>
> I will have to reformat the hard drives in Linux ext2 fs. I do that so
> I can share data with my Devuan Linux laptop.
>
> Any advice would be appreciated on what kind of external HDD to buy.
>
>
> I am using OpenBSD 7.5 and Devuan Daedalus 5.0.
>
> --
> Kind regards,
> Jonathan
>
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