A file system visible for solaris and windows?

UNIX for Advanced & Expert Users
1

Hi,

I have a 1TB external iomega hard disk, and I want to plug it to a solaris 8 machine. The problem is that solaris doesn't recognize the NTFS file system partition.

I was thinking of formatting it to FAT32, but I would like to know if anyone knows a better file system, considering:

  • I want that the data inside the hard disk is visible in windows as well as in solaris.
  • The hard disk is 1TB big, so even if FAT32 is an option, it's not the best one when we manage big size files.

Thank you very much, and excuse my english.

Danny

2

Use samba...

3

yes, a network filesystem would be a saver solution. a large fat32 filesystem is known to be not so secure with the data... and windows can not read ufs or zfs filesystems. so a NAS box for your harddrive and a port in your network is a secure and not to expensive solution. the only disadvantage i see is the speed as a network filesystem is slower than a direct connected storage.

4

I do seem to remember reading about ext2 being supported in Solaris 8 (maybe through some additional driver), and there are ext2/3 IFS drivers for Windows, eg here (haven't tested it, though).

5

Normally, I am going to work with that hard disk in solaris. But sometimes, I need to take some data from that hard disk into another computers which run windows.

So the fact of using special drivers for windows so it can read the hard disk is not very viable. Because that means I will have to install those drivers in every windows machine I use.

I'm gonna study this NAS box solution, and if it doesn't work, I will just use a fat32 file system. Anyways it's just a data hard disk. I dont want to install any operating systems on it.

Thank you all for your help. Tomorrow I will tell you how the experiment finished.

Regards!

6

I may be off here, but what about NTFS3G ? Does that not work for Solaris?

7

I never heard of NTFS3G before, I will study it. Anyways, my solaris machine doesn't want to read any usb device I plug: external hard disks, pendrives, etc. I formatted all of them in FAT/FAT32 and if i run the command "Iostat -En", I get illegal requests and soft errors.

I will try to use another filesystem for the usb devices, though if any of you have any better ideas, please share them.

I will write back with my results.

Regards