FILESYSTEMS


Most of you are familiar with the Fat16, Fat32 and NTFS filesystem for windows. In linux we have Ext2, Ext3, Reiserfs and Xfs. The last 3 are journaled filesystems, in fact Ext3 is the same as Ext2 but only with a journal added.

A journaled filesystem allows quicker recovery in case of system crash or power faillure.
Reiserfs and Xfs are very new systems partly still under development.

I would advice the Ext3.
You can easily convert Ext2 ( Linux native ) to Ext3 without re-format or re-install:

( where you replace the "?" with the number of the partition, see previous text about "partitions" )

After you have done this for all your partitions you'll have to change the entries in your /etc/fstab :

Change the ext2 in ext3 for the partitions you converted

( sure you can use vi as editor too ! )

There you go ! Now you have a journaled filesystem.


Bruno


-- Apr 28 2003 ( Revised Dec 12 2005 ) --