ntfs-3g vs. ext2ifs

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Tue, Jul 28, 2009 at 05:37:04PM -0400, William Muriithi wrote:
> >
> >> Sure you are limited to 4GB files, but that isn't usually a problem.
> >>
> >
> > FAT32 has issues creating file system greater than 4 GB on windows. If you
> > create the partition and file system from Linux though, you can create go
> > past that limit, which mean it should not factor in on decision making
> >
> >>
> >> By the way, I take back the above statement. It not any where near what
> was in discussion here. I misread the thread. The 4GB limit on the file size
> is a hard limit can not be avoided on any platform. Its actually driven by
> the hardware I believe. I think most file system had this limit when running
> on 32 bit hardware, at least I do remember oracle have it.  Something to do
> with the 2 power 32 address limit.

Well depends on the structures.  FAT32 uses a 32bit unsigned value
to store the filesize, so that's the limit.  It uses a 32bit value to
handle cluster numbers and by using clusters of various sizes rather
large FAT32 filesystems can be made.

More modern filesystems of course use larger values to store the filesize
which solves the 4GB limit (or 2GB in the case of those that used signed
32bit values.

Of course iso9660 doesn't support files over 4GB either, and tends
to stick with 1GB.  UDF I believe supports larger than 4GB files but
most people try to stick to less than 2GB file sizes just to maintain
compatiblity with older OSs that might not support large file sizes.
Certainly DVD video sticks to 1GB per chunk.

-- 
Len Sorensen
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