Ok i have a 5TB usb hard drive that is mostly used for weekly backups of my system. It is hooked to a raspberry pi and has an exfat file system and used as a samba share.

But i need to occasionally unplug it and connect it directly to some other machines for 2 reasons.

  1. For use with steam on linux (i store my games on it)

  2. For use with obs on windows (i do some screen recording and need to be able to save the output to the drive)

Here’s the dilemma. Games that require proton will not launch from an exfat drive (trust me i’ve tried all the “hacks” and cant make it happen). So i plan to reformat the drive as an ext4 file system.

However, windows does not support ext4 natively. I do have WSL and could probably mount it there but here are the issues.

Another user in my house will be primarily the one using obs and they are not technically inclined (or at least not linux inclined) i want them to be able to plug this device in and just press record and have it output to the drive, this was working fine with exfat but obviously once i reformat it could be an issue.

I have a few options and wanted to run it by here first before committing to the reformat.

Option 1) reformat drive to ext4. Keep it as a samba drive at all times, except when gaming, and have obs output the video to the drive over the network

-is obs capable of doing this reliably?

Option 2) reformat to ext4 and unplug drive when gaming or needing to use obs. Rig up a script to automount the drive with wsl when detected.

-will the mounted drive show up in the windows file explorer natively? Or could i at least pin its location to quick access?
-can i actually create some way for it to automount the drive with no user input required?
-ooh but the distro is on the drive to conserve the laptop's space, could present an issue

Option 3) reformat the drive as part ntfs part ext4 and then plug it in for gaming and obs?

-i believe in linux i could just add the part-uuid to fstab so it only mounts the ext4 portion or maybe i could mount both?
-would windows automatically just mount the ntfs portion?

Imo, option 1 is the best but i would like to have a fail safe in case i ever need to plug it directly to the windows machine. So realistically a hybrid of option 1 and 2 is best. Is there a better way to do this? Will any of these methods work?

  • Hellmo_luciferrari@lemm.ee
    8·
    9 months ago

    NTFS will give you issues just like exfat. You can partition it as multiple partitions. 1 ntfs, 1 ext4. Or I personally for Linux have been using btrfs.

    There is a btrfs driver for windows, but I don’t know much about ita use cases.

      • neosheo@discuss.tchncs.deOP
        2·
        9 months ago

        That’s disappointing, but mostly i would be plugging it in to windows every once in a while. Whereas i would be running nightly backups when its hooked as a samba drive. Would i need to eject it every time i unplugged? I wouldnt mind that

        • Possibly linux@lemmy.zipEnglish
          3·
          9 months ago

          I would eject or else you likely will get a blue screen. Even if you do eject there is likely a bunch of bugs.

          If it does work for you make sure you donate to the Dev. He deals will a lot of harassment on Github and does the good work.

    • neosheo@discuss.tchncs.deOP
      2·
      9 months ago

      Hmm i dont have any experience with btrfs but im open to it.

      Is speed comparable to ext4? And should i install the driver on windows i could just plug the drive in an it would become accessible without user input?

  • yo_scottie_oh@lemmy.mlEnglish
    61·
    9 months ago
    1. For use with steam on linux (i store my games on it)

    Have you actually played a game from a mechanical HDD yet? I’m asking because 99% of “freezing” troubleshooting/help posts in gaming subs that I follow on that other site that shall not be named are because the OP stores their games on a mechanical HDD instead of a SSD, so if you’ve been doing this, I’m curious how your experience has been so far.

    If you have a little extra cash to burn, I’d recommend springing for an extra 256 GB SSD or something, which can be had for $30 on Amazon in the US (not sure about your country).

    EDIT:

    1. For use with obs on windows (i do some screen recording and need to be able to save the output to the drive)

    Now that I think about it, I’d be shocked if recording video to a mechanical HDD went smoothly as well. If my prediction is correct, then you might consider first recording the session to the OS drive (assuming it’s a SSD), and then copying the file to the HDD for long term storage after you finish recording.

    • kuneho@lemmy.world
      3·
      9 months ago

      I used and use for gaming and OBS mechanical hard drives - no issues with them.

      I won’t run OS from them anymore, but gaming and recording full hd live is not a problem.

      maybe the OS doing some buffering to SSD, idk, but as NOT the only drive, they are still pretty nice.

    • neosheo@discuss.tchncs.deOP
      2·
      9 months ago

      So i mostly play older games (half life, skyrim, dishonored, etc) i have no issues with the mechanical drive for these. Now admittedly the larger games like skyrim i havent tried on linux only on windows but i dont see why it would be an issue.

      I will probably eventually get a ssd for gaming and make the hdd purely for storage.

      I have already recorded to this drive from the windows device with no issues. It is not intended to be super high quality tho. I just dont know if running over the network will go as smooth.

      Rn, im leaning towards using btrfs bc it seems the performance speed between it and ext4 will be negligible and i will be testing out the driver for windows and obs over the network.

    • Sonotsugipaa@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      2·
      9 months ago

      I played many games that didn’t fit onto either of my SSDs, on an HDD, including Destiny 2 and for a while Baldur’s Gate 3 - they had ~70% longer loading times, but they didn’t freeze outside of loading screens.

      As for recording, you’d be amazed at how filesystem caches are good at what they do

  • flubba86@lemmy.world
    5·
    9 months ago

    Damn, I just formatted a new SSD with exfat for a shared Steam library across Windows and Linux PCs. I haven’t noticed any issues yet, but thanks for the topic. I might just end up switching to BTRFS.

  • Fisch@lemmy.ml
    4·
    9 months ago

    I just use BTRFS. There’s an open source driver for Windows you can install.

    • neosheo@discuss.tchncs.deOP
      1·
      9 months ago

      I’m leaning toward btrfs. Gonna set it up tonight and test. Is there any major differences from ext4 i should know? I know it has snapshots but i read about if you dont use the right kind of drives it can corrupt data, is thus true or not really something i should worry about?

      • Fisch@lemmy.ml
        2·
        9 months ago

        It has a lot of differences to ext4 but it’s still just a file system. You’re not gonna notice any difference just normally using the drive (aside from copying being instant). I’ve never heard about it causing corruptions on different kinds of drives. I use it on 3 SSDs and one HDD and have no issues.

        • neosheo@discuss.tchncs.deOP
          1·
          9 months ago

          Ok i’m running into some issues. I have formatted with btrfs but immediately it does not work when attempting to mount.

          I had it mounted and then set up with fstab, test installing some games to it but the second i ejected the device and then reattached it it cannot be mounted.

          I get the error

          An error occurred while accessing 'wd_black5tb', the system responded: The requested operation has failed: Error mounting system-managed device /dev/sdb1: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sdb1, missing codepage or helper program, or other error

          I also installed winbtrfs with chocolatey but the drive fails to show up once plugged in and i dont see the drive anywhere

          • Fisch@lemmy.ml
            1·
            9 months ago

            It looks like it either didn’t get ejected properly and something is corrupt or you’re mounting it wrong. It’s probably the first tho. BTRFS has very good commandline tools that can help you fix this.

  • ferret@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    4·
    9 months ago

    the UDF filesystem is supported by both windows and linux, and will have acceptable performance on both unlike the windows BTRFS driver. Unlike exfat, it supports all the funky stuff needed to make steam games work.

    • neosheo@discuss.tchncs.deOP
      1·
      9 months ago

      I’m not really worried about performance on windows since i will only very occasionally be plugging it in there. Ive never heard of udf but will check it out too

  • persimmon@lemmy.world
    3·
    9 months ago

    Not sure if you’re looking to keep only to foss solutions, but if you’re OK with a proprietary driver (and as you’re on windows anyway), the ext4 driver for windows from paragon sounds like it would work well in your situation. You can install it on the windows machine and it’ll mount ext4 read/write like any other windows-compatible drive, complete with automount. They give you a ten day trial to try it out, so you could test it a bit first to see if it’ll work ok with OBS, then it’s twenty dollars USD. Not advertising for them, but I just went through this process myself for an ext4 external hdd earlier today and wanted to share. :)

    https://www.paragon-software.com/home/linuxfs-windows/#

  • mvirts@lemmy.world
    1·
    9 months ago

    Def try 1, obs will write to the file as usual and windows will be responsible for moving data over samba. Really depends on your network and recording settings.

      • fluffyb@lemmy.fluffyb.net
        1·
        9 months ago

        Yes and the answer is you can’t do it in anyway that’s fool proof that won’t eventually result in data loss. Just buy another one and be done with it.

        • neosheo@discuss.tchncs.deOP
          1·
          9 months ago

          I probably will eventually. I put btrfs on it and it works pretty well. Im a little iffy on the windows driver but i tested obs and it can write over the network just fine.