I'm wiping a drive now and may clone another drive onto it later. Its current filesystem is ext3/ext4, so I'm wondering whether I should format it as ext4 again or use exFAT instead. Are there any Linux-specific issues to consider? I don't expect to use the drive with other operating systems.
3 Answers
After formatting, make sure the filesystem is owned by the user who needs to write to it. You may need to adjust ownership and permissions with chown or chmod. Some graphical disk utilities also provide a ‘take ownership’ option that handles this for you.
If the drive will mainly be used with Linux, ext4 is the better choice. It supports journaling and recovery features that exFAT doesn’t, while exFAT is mainly useful when you need the drive to work easily with Windows or other operating systems. Also, if you’re going to clone a disk onto it, the cloning process will usually replace the existing filesystem anyway.
Double-check the target drive before formatting. Device names and drive numbering aren’t guaranteed to stay the same between boots, so identify the disk carefully and use filesystem UUIDs for persistent mounts. If you clone a filesystem, be aware that the clone may also copy its UUID, which can cause confusion if both drives are connected.
That makes sense. I don’t need compatibility with other operating systems, so I’ll stick with ext4.