Traveling with a big file

[Tech Writer]

Thanks for the quick feedback, so far....  I've noticed that most of these 
USB portable disks (FIRELITE, etc) are marked as being compatible with 
Windows and MAC, but don't mention Linux.

My task is to document some Linux tasks, so I'm running in Linux, and plan 
to copy files to/from there.  But, I'd also like to still be able to plug 
the disk into a Windows machine on occasion, to transfer scripts (I have 
used Samba, but the machines aren't always accessible to each other).

So...  if I reformat this USB disk with NTFS, will I be able to read it on 
both Linux and Windows systems?  If I try EX2/EXT3, with Windows read it? 
If not, I think I'll try to split the file, as was suggested earlier.

Peg

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Ben Scott" <dragonhawk at gmail.com>
To: "GNHLUG Group" <gnhlug-discuss at mail.gnhlug.org>
Sent: Thursday, November 30, 2006 2:06 PM
Subject: Re: Traveling with a big file


> On 11/30/06, Ted Roche <tedroche at tedroche.com> wrote:
>>>  You can also use the "split" command to split files into chunks, and
>>> then use "cat" to put the pieces back together into one big file.  Or
>>> on 'doze, use "COPY PART1+PART2 BIGFILE" to concatenate.
>>
>> Bearing in mind, of course, that the target file system may have
>> limitations on the size of the file that can be created.
>
>  Yah, if the computer the OP is trying to transport *to* is limited
> to 4 GB files, you're in trouble.  But generally speaking, they would
> find their DVD writing program would fall apart with that limit
> anyway, so there's not much you can do about that.
>
>> I'm pretty sure FAT32 is limited to 4 Gb
>
>  It is.  But NTFS can do up to 16 TB per file, and I think EXT2/3 can
> do 2 TB per file.
>
>> I've heard of people successfully
>> reformatting their drive in other less-limited filesystems, but
>> haven't tried it myself.
>
>  The various 'doze OSes which support NTFS also provide
> "CONVERT.EXE", which will convert from FAT to NTFS in-place.  It
> actually works surprisingly well, for the most part.  The major
> problem is that it doesn't set-up file permissions the way a new
> install to NTFS would.  But then, if one is running FAT, security is
> likely not a big concern anyway... :)
>
> -- Ben
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