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I have a bunch of external and internal HDDs that I use on a Linux system. I only have Linux systems, so using a Linux file-system would only make sense, right? However I'm currently using NTFS everywhere, because it gives me the most usable space out of HDDs.
I would like to switch to Linux file-systems now though, mostly because of permissions and compability (e.g. I can't get my LUKS encrypted NTFS partition to resize under Linux, keeps telling me to chkdsk under Windows).
However when I formatted those HDDs I tried out a bunch of different filesystems and every Linux filesystem, even ext2 which as far as I know has no journaling, used a lot of space for itself. I don't recall exact values, but it was over 100GB that NTFS got me more on a 2TB HDD, which is a lot.
So my question is: Is there a way to make ext-filesystems use less space for themselves? Or is there another filesystem (I've tried ext2, ext3, ext4, NTFS and vfat - None of them came even close to the usable space NTFS offered me) with perfect Linux support and great usable space?
I'd love to hear about how and why filesystems (especially ext2 which has no journaling) use that much more space than NTFS and I don't know where else to ask. I'd mostly prefer a way to use ext4 without journaling and anything else that uses up this much space, if that's possible.
1
Have you seen this thread?
– JakeGould – 2018-08-05T18:42:24.1034I have, and it explained what uses up the extra space but the difference between NTFS and ext is MUCH bigger than between reiserfs and ext, and I'm wondering if there is any way to make it smaller. For example on a 1TB HDD I'm able to use 989GB with NTFS. ext4 would give me around 909GB. – confetti – 2018-08-05T18:48:22.847
Fair enough. Decent question and the answer is enlightening too. – JakeGould – 2018-08-05T22:33:37.750
3how do you actually measure what space is available? this is important because depending on what values you look at you may or may not see the effect of the 5% reservation for example as is stated in the linked question – eMBee – 2018-08-06T04:04:20.537
I used to check the "Free space" properties in the file manager,
df
andgnome-system-monitor
. However the latter seems to have another column calledfree
that actually shows the free space including the 5% which I just found out about though. – confetti – 2018-08-06T04:31:06.5732Keep in mind that journaling on file systems such as ext3 and ext4 is a good thing. It's pretty easy to lose power to an external drive or unplug it by accident if it's a USB, When that happens, it's often no big deal because it heals itself using the journal when it starts back up. Without that safety net, things would be much worse. It's not just a case of more is better. – Joe – 2018-08-06T20:18:33.223
That still applies for LUKS encrypted devices, right? I'm assuming the journal recovery/fsck will be performed on mount of the partition inside the LUKS-container, correct? @harrymc's answer gives me enough space already to use ext4 and keep the journaling. – confetti – 2018-08-06T20:24:22.267