[Wiltshire] Formatting a USB portable hard drive for Linux

[Max]

I can't promise about the mac, but all the machines should be able to  
read ntfs without any issues. It'd be worth checking which ntfs  
versions are supported where, having just written it I'm now not so  
sure. I wouldn't bother creating a volume for truecrypt I'd just  
create truecrypt files, it what I use all the time (unless
For whatever reason you wanted an actual partition)


Max

Sent from my iPhone

On 7 Nov 2009, at 07:38, Tim Walker <tim at sidingsound.co.uk> wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> I haven't posted here in ages (though I read the list digests), but I
> have a query which I think you're my best hope of getting some good
> advice :)
>
> Recently, I bought a refurbished Asus Eee PC 701 8Gb netbook with
> Linux, from Laptops Direct (for £109 - I think they still have some
> left). As you may know, the distro on there is a tweaked version of
> Xandros, customised for the machine's hardware. It does a good enough
> job, and I've already managed to hack it a bit more to my liking (e.g.
> I switched the window manager to Fluxbox).
>
> For my impending birthday, my family has got me a 500Gb portable USB
> hard drive (a Freecom), which I plan to use for... well, basically
> storing shedloads of multimedia files for use with the Eee when I/we
> are away from home :-)
>
> What I'd appreciate some advice on, is partitioning of the drive, and
> which filesystem(s) are best to use. This is perhaps a little more
> complex a question than normal, due partly to the mix of computers we
> have at home (in short: the Eee, an iMac (our primary desktop
> machine), a WinXP laptop and a couple of Linux boxes).
>
> Here's my idea of how I think the drive should be 'divvied up':
>
> - A primary partition of FAT32 (perhaps 32Gb or so), for "exchange"
> with other (Windows) PCs.
>
> - At the other end, a small partition (4Gb?) for experimenting with
> TrueCrypt.
>
> - As for the rest of the drive, this is the tough part. Do I format it
> as ext2 (or ext3), considering that I'll probably be using the drive
> with the Linux Eee most of all; or as HFS+, as I'll most likely need
> to connect the drive to the Mac fairly often to transfer files onto  
> it?
>
> From what I've read, it looks like there's not much to choose from,
> between the Eee mounting an HFS+ volume, and the Mac mounting an ext2/
> ext3 volume. It appears both can be done (with the odd caveat), but I
> wondered if any of you have had experience with this kind of scenario,
> and could advise on which approach might work best?
>
> Many thanks :)
>
> Tim
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