NAS Drive File Formats

What filesystem do NAS drives use? How are they formatted?

Since most NAS drives are basically Linux devices using Samba services, they use the ext2 or ext3 format.

The ext file system has a long history in linux. The ext2 and ext3 files systems are merely the latest incarnations. They support long file names and large disk sizes very well.

The major difference between ext2 and ext3 is journaling. Journaling keeps track of disk changes so data can be recreated in the event of a bad sector or a bad disk write due to a power failure.

Why not NTFS or FAT32 or some other system? Well, it really doesn't come into play unless you remove the disk from the NAS device and try to use it elsewhere with data intact. As long as you are using the NAS as NAS then the file system doesn't matter.

If you purchase an enclosure it may require you to reformat your drives. Keep that in mind if you want to reuse old disks and want to keep the data. You may have to back it up before you put them in the NAS enclosure.

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