I use a Thinkpad T420 with Ubuntu 16.04 and Windows 10 on separate SSDs. I also have a 3rd internal HDD that I use for data storage between the two operating systems. I formatted the storage HDD to NTFS in order to share data across both operating systems but have not had much success. Is there a certain format that my storage HDD needs to be in order to reliably share data across both Ubuntu and Windows?
1 Answer
You can use FAT32 for the data storage that you use between both operating systems. This way you avoid some complication between both (Like permissions, frozen states and so on). But the two issues with FAT32 are:
4GB File Size Limitation - This will depend on your use for it, but there is a limitation of 4GB file size for FAT32 partitions. This means, you can't have a file in a FAT32 partition that is 4GB or bigger (Well 4.2GB to be exact).
Partition Limitation Size - Your partitions can't be bigger than 2TB. This means that if the hard drive in total is 2TB, you have no problem, but if it's bigger, you will need to create more partitions, each one with 2TB of size.
Apart from this, you also have NTFS but Windows 10 might want to take control of it through the permission system. I have heard of cases where the hibernating effect in Windows 10 also affects other hard drives with NTFS. You would need to take care that this does not happen to your other hard drive. One way would be, instead of partitioning your hard drive with Windows 10, you would use gparted on Ubuntu. Partition your sharing hard drive to NTFS and that should, in theory, let you share between both systems the same way as FAT32.
So basically you have FAT32 (Less issues but with the limitations mentioned above) and NTFS.
exfat
filesystem which is also windows-native, and with less overhead thanntfs
.