Recommended file system for USB storage

danielg · 2019-09-30T20:17:28.233Z

For interoperability with MacOS and write support, do you recommend ExFAT over FAT32?

NTFS and Ext4 are not an option for me.

alzhao · 2019-10-03T04:35:33.316Z

Do you want to plug your USB storage to the router for sharing?

I think the router does not support ExFat by default. However FAT32, NTFS and Ext4 is supported.

sfx2000 · 2019-10-05T23:24:32.957Z

danielg:

ExFAT over FAT32

FAT32 generally works for MacOS (with limitations) - ExFAT is also supported by MacOS, but as @alzhao notes, not supported by the router.

danielg · 2019-10-07T11:31:32.891Z

Thanks for the replies. I was able to read/write on an ExFAT USB stick actually, but it is only marginally faster than writing to FAT32. I got 3,5 MB/s instead of 2,7 MB/s. It seems strange, because I can write at 20 MB/s using a 2013 model Time Capsule which is five years older than the B1300 and has not received software updates for several years. I figured B1300 would be at least as fast.

danielg · 2019-10-07T11:36:54.601Z

alzhao:

Do you want to plug your USB storage to the router for sharing?

I think the router does not support ExFat by default. However FAT32, NTFS and Ext4 is supported.

I would like to use it as a destination for incremental over-the-air backups to USB drives which can also be attached to computers directly for faster initial backups and restores.

It seems that this is not realistic as such slow write speeds are problematic even for incremental backups.

alzhao · 2019-10-14T06:05:40.183Z

You are right. It is not professional NAS and should not be used for tough or reliability sensitive scenarios.

sfx2000 · 2019-10-20T23:30:39.939Z

danielg:

I got 3,5 MB/s instead of 2,7 MB/s. It seems strange, because I can write at 20 MB/s using a 2013 model Time Capsule which is five years older than the B1300 and has not received software updates for several years. I figured B1300 would be at least as fast.

Different chips, different software, different purposes.

Actually, Apple recently pushed out updates for the TimeCapsule to address some firmware issues.

TimeCapsule runs NetBSD, and a fairly stout dual-core Cortex-A9 Broadcom chip along with a tuned Samba stack and an inhouse AppleFileProtocol stack and HFS+ on the disk - and all in-house development.

If you’re looking to replace a TimeCapsule - consider the QNAP/Synology NAS boxes - better support there.