Hi all.

With external 3.5" HDD enclosures popping up now with an eternert port for connecting as a NAS, I have been checking out many of them.

Most seem to adopt FAT32 as the storage format when interfacing using the network, but NTFS when directly connected via the USB cable.

Why?

NTFS is surely a better filesystem for all purposes, given the choice between FAT32 and NTFS, so how come they force an old filesystem on you? Is it simply to provide the best cross-platform compatibility in that FAT32 can be read by all modern Windoze, Mac and Linux systems?

...or is it some Microsoft royalties limitation on NTFS over a network?

The case I am currently looking at getting a couple of, is the Welland NetShare 3.5" enclosure.

Also, a techincal filesystem question with respect to external storage:

- Pretty much all of my external drives are NTFS. Is there any loss in using FAT32, other then the fact that it can't support files bigger then 4GB each?(not a problem in my case)?

Pretty much all of my external drives are NTFS. Is there any loss in using FAT32, other then the fact that it can't support files bigger then 4GB each?(not a problem in my case)?
Less security (if that is not a problem) and no possibility of encryption.
Less recoverability.
The file size limit is more likely to be 2GB but it depends on the OS.
Unicode filenames not possible (so limited to ANSI/ASCII).
Slower on large volumes.
Bad space economy on large volumes.
A large but limited number of files per volume.
And a range of less utilised features are not available such as sparse files, disk quotas and volume mount points.

I don't believe there are any copyright issues involved in the data transfer method - but with copyright I suppose anything is possible. In general stand-alone drives are un-formatted and ones in enclosures formatted as FAT to accomodate older Linux and Mac users.

Addendum:
Bear in mind that it is the server software running on a networked volume that makes its data available to its clients. In that sense the type of file system is less of relevance to the network PCs accessing it. A Win98 box, for example, networked to a Linux or NT-based OS can be "served" files from an underlying ext2 or ntfs file system - even though the Win98 box would not be able to read the file system for itself (without specific software/drivers) if directly attached to the hard drive.

Oh - several problems then.

In the Welland ones I am looking at, it does not indicate that it supports NTFS as a filesystem when used as a NAS, so I am curious why they, or any other external NAS, would impose the limitations of FAT32 on their product.

I wonder if you could format the drive to NTFS using the USB cable, then access it using the network?

From what I can understand - you cannot do this - the network interface in the enclosure will not see the NTFS volume.

I have sent questions to both Welland themselves, and my local supplier about this for confirmation one way or the other.

I know that the data streaming is not FS specific - I used to have a Linux-based server, which was all ext2 FS, and it would stream data to Windoze machines. The issue I have, is that the external enclosures built-in HDD-LAN interface does not seem to support NTFS at hardware level. IE: The LAN port on the box does not care, but the IDE-LAN or SATA-LAN link will not look at NTFS volumes - it's the same basic concept, as putting an NTFS volume on a Win98 box - the Win98 box will refuse to see the NTFS volume, and that is my concern here with the external enclosures. ;)

I haven't used any NAS enclosures though I have set up a Linux box as a file server - which boils down to the same thing surely.

As I understand it most NAS enclosures use an embedded 'Nix' or BSD OS and so need to have a file system they can read and write to. Possibly they haven't caught up with the progress made with NTFS drivers under Linux generally of late or else, as you hinted, there is a worry about MS lurking in the background.

So I would expect them to use either FAT or ext2/3 file systems but possibly NTFS in the near future particularly if any MS-integrated server software were to edge into the market. Those systems using ext2/3 would be equivalent in the types and sizes of files they could serve up compared to NTFS but of course would have limited value if the drives were removed or otherwise accessed directly by windows systems.