I'm looking to set up an external hard drive for data storage and I'm curious about best practices. Should I create just one large ext4 partition for the entire drive, or are there better ways to manage the space?
3 Answers
You can definitely format your drive in ext4, but keep in mind that even after formatting, there might be a small FAT32 partition left over for the drive's partition table. This is common when using a GPT or MBR setup.
Using GParted is a great choice for partitioning your drive. You can go for one big partition, which is perfectly fine whether you're using it for storage or backups. Just remember, if your drive is over 2TB, you should use GPT (GUID Partition Table) to handle the larger size, since MBR won't cut it for anything above that. Also, consider formatting with NTFS if you want compatibility with both Windows and Linux, but make sure to install the NTFS support utilities on your Linux distro. Cheers!
Just to clarify, MBR (Master Boot Record) is an older style of partitioning. Newer systems use GPT with UEFI, and yes, the partitioning information is often stored in a tiny FAT32 system. You're all set with ext4, just make sure you know what's happening behind the scenes.
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