The New NTFS Driver Looks Like It Will Finally Be Ready With Linux 5.15

[pipe13]

So I believe the real answer was that it was about money. It is always about money.

I agree. In that regard I've a question about Michaels final dig: "but these days NTFS is of declining relevance to companies now focused on exFAT and other file-system options, which has led [Paragon] to be open to upstreaming their code."

Given exFAT has advantages over FAT, in what ways does it or can it replace NTFS? I've always (perhaps mistakenly) thought all the FATs were somewhat toys compared to journaling filesystems such as NTFS, EXT4, HFS, and their ilk. (And where does f2fs fit in?) My question is what use cases do Paragon's paying customers have that previously required NTFS but now can at least get by with exFAT, use cases that with earlier FATs could not?

For the record, I'm really looking forward to Paragon's new NTFS3 for my own development and testing efforts split between Windows and Linux. I'm using ntfs-3g on a shared SDD, but have had to duplicate much of my effort onto a linux-only ext4 partition simply because fuse is too slow.

[CommunityMember]

My question is what use cases do Paragon's paying customers have that previously required NTFS but now can at least get by with exFAT, use cases that with earlier FATs could not?

I think the number one use case is large files. FAT had a 4GB limit per file, which is rather constraining in today's world. For the ubiquitous flash drive exchange(s) between consenting adults, exFAT is now the common choice for one file system that can be read/written almost everywhere.

[birdie]

I agree. In that regard I've a question about Michaels final dig: "but these days NTFS is of declining relevance to companies now focused on exFAT and other file-system options, which has led [Paragon] to be open to upstreaming their code."

Given exFAT has advantages over FAT, in what ways does it or can it replace NTFS? I've always (perhaps mistakenly) thought all the FATs were somewhat toys compared to journaling filesystems such as NTFS, EXT4, HFS, and their ilk. (And where does f2fs fit in?) My question is what use cases do Paragon's paying customers have that previously required NTFS but now can at least get by with exFAT, use cases that with earlier FATs could not?

For the record, I'm really looking forward to Paragon's new NTFS3 for my own development and testing efforts split between Windows and Linux. I'm using ntfs-3g on a shared SDD, but have had to duplicate much of my effort onto a linux-only ext4 partition simply because fuse is too slow.

exFAT is (good) for removable storage and file archiving. It can't and won't work for storing anything which requires MAC, so NTFS is as relevant as ever.

Also exFAT doesn't support any form of links (software/hardware) which is really a bummer and I wonder why Microsoft didn't implement them. I guess they presumed that exFAT is mostly used by non-technical people who would have utterly confused by links (and what that reason I guess Google eliminated the Google Photos/Drive integration which was an absolute bummer for millions of people who were robbed of a feature which cannot be replaced by anything).

The absence of journalling is actually a good thing for SSD drives where this filesystem is primarily used.

(Meanwhile I'm in an absolute minority of people who run their ext4 volumes with journalling disabled).

[kbios]

(Meanwhile I'm in an absolute minority of people who run their ext4 volumes with journalling disabled).

I hope you have a robust backup system

[dragon321]

I wonder if Linux can be installed on NTFS partition with this driver. That would be quite funny.

Not a big fan of NTFS but It's very nice that we'll finally get this driver in Linux kernel. While exFAT is enough in many cases where interoperability with Windows is needed, it lacks some features like journaling so having good support for NTFS would help here. Yeah, there is ntfs-3g but kernel driver brings some advantages compared to FUSE file systems.

[doublez13]

I wonder if Linux can be installed on NTFS partition with this driver. That would be quite funny.

I would assume a fair bit of work would need to be put into grub to support the different NTFS features.

[birdie]

I hope you have a robust backup system

(ext4) journalling does not protect you from data loss - it only makes fsck run faster and in a perfect world you must always run fsck even if you have journalling but your system crashed for some reasons.

[stormcrow]

I agree. In that regard I've a question about Michaels final dig: "but these days NTFS is of declining relevance to companies now focused on exFAT and other file-system options, which has led [Paragon] to be open to upstreaming their code."

Given exFAT has advantages over FAT, in what ways does it or can it replace NTFS? I've always (perhaps mistakenly) thought all the FATs were somewhat toys compared to journaling filesystems such as NTFS, EXT4, HFS, and their ilk. (And where does f2fs fit in?) My question is what use cases do Paragon's paying customers have that previously required NTFS but now can at least get by with exFAT, use cases that with earlier FATs could not?

For the record, I'm really looking forward to Paragon's new NTFS3 for my own development and testing efforts split between Windows and Linux. I'm using ntfs-3g on a shared SDD, but have had to duplicate much of my effort onto a linux-only ext4 partition simply because fuse is too slow.

exFAT can't and won't replace NTFS. They aren't in the same league and don't address the same issues. NTFS will be around for as long as Windows is, and many users will need to have proper read support in what ever OSes are being used for even longer. What do their paying customers get? Most hard drives, internal or external, from the Windows world are NTFSnot exFAT. It's only flash storage such as sticks and SD cards that are exFAT. Not only do I hope to see this effort do well, I hope they take the lessons learned with this project and apply it to improve the MacOS version the NTFS product. Reliable read and write support helps a lot of industries that don't want to deal with Windows but have to interoperate with it.

[kbios]

(ext4) journalling does not protect you from data loss - it only makes fsck run faster and in a perfect world you must always run fsck even if you have journalling but your system crashed for some reasons.

The data=journal mode absolutely protects from data loss

[Nille]

Given exFAT has advantages over FAT, in what ways does it or can it replace NTFS? I've always (perhaps mistakenly) thought all the FATs were somewhat toys compared to journaling filesystems such as NTFS, EXT4, HFS, and their ilk. (And where does f2fs fit in?) My question is what use cases do Paragon's paying customers have that previously required NTFS but now can at least get by with exFAT, use cases that with earlier FATs could not?

There driver was probably used in Settop boxes etc. for access usb sticks and external drives. exfat has the benefit that is implemented by all major operating systems and is a requirement for SDXC Flash Cards.