Seeking precationary advice before swapping-out USB HDD

[Fuddyduddy]

Hi

I'm planning to swap my existing USB external HDD for a bigger one. I've consulted the 'Help' guidance (under 'Disk Setup' - 'USB disks' tab), and it looks deceptively simple. However I would just like to check out some things first, to guard against my doing something stupid.

The drive I plan to use has already been used for other things, so I presume that it will need to be prepared in some way before being plugged into the NAS. Is it only a matter of formatting it and if so what would be the best file-system to select (it's currently formatted as NTFS but maybe FAT32 would be better?), or do I have to create a new partition/volume as well?

I'm not planning to preserve the contents of the existing drive, but to start all over again from scratch. However, I'm totally unclear how to go about restoring files from the backup drive if and when I do need to do so: where should I look, please, for a Guide to that process?

[Jocko]

Indeed there are some differences between NTFS and a FAT32.

- NTFS support is not natively supported by linux: NTFS partition is handled as a read-only partition. You need to use a specific driver to have r/w access but it is not fully free. On the free version, there is a write speed limitation! (so not nice for backup)
About NTFS partition size and files, there is no much limitation
Linux does not support the NTFS user privileges.

- a FAT32 file system is natively supported by linux and can be used with a r/w partition.
a FAT32 can not handle a file with a size upper than 4GB (be careful if you have videos or disk images)
A common limit on the FAT32 size is 8TB but in fact can be more large.
With next version you will be able to format directly an USB drive with a fat32 from the firmware interface but only if its size is lower than 2TB

About your existing drive I suggest to format it directly by plugging it on your windows laptop (see disks manager console)

[Fuddyduddy]

Hi Jocko

Thanks for the advice.

A quandary:- Windows default 'format' tool offers three file-system options - NTFS, exFAT and REFS, exFAT having superseded FAT32. Ought I to choose one of the latter two (in which case which is preferable) or is neither fully compatible?

[Jocko]

Currently the firmware has no support for exfat (need to deepen this point on next releases)

So you need to stay on the choose between NTFS and FAT32 (an exfat fs can be convert to FAT32 from win 7,8 or 10)