Is it a good idea to format external USB drives used for backup as exFAT?

[halloleo]

I backup the data on my DS1520+ via external USB drives. I would like to format these backup drives in exFAT format, so that, if needed, I can mount them easily on my Mac as well.


Is this advisable or is this a bad idea? Do other people backup to exFAT formatted drives?


Also, I think, I need to install the exFAT package on the Synology, but that shouldn't be an issue, right?


Thanks for pointers!

 

[EAZ1964]

you can use the exfat for this purpose.
Just know that whenever you move files from one fs to another, you may loose (and gain) information, as stored attibutes may differ from fs to fs. Sometimes this is important, often it is not.

 

[halloleo]

you can use the exfat for this purpose.

Thanks for this. Do you have experience with it?

Just know that whenever you move files from one fs to another, you may loose (and gain) information, as stored attibutes may differ from fs to fs. Sometimes this is important, often it is not.

Good point! I am using btrfs on the NAS itself (I think). Backing this up to exFAT should keep similar metadata I hope.

 

[Telos]

Backing this up to exFAT should keep similar metadata I hope.

Unless you need to use the drives on a PC, formatting to ext4 would be preferred for backup as it is Linux native, preserves permissions, and has journaling. That's what I do. If I need PC access (unlikely), I'll use an ext4 driver.

 

[EAZ1964]

On the meta data

Comparison of file systems - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Gives an overview on the metadata differences between the FS; BTRFS stores more metadata than exfat, but it may not be relevant information. main differences are in file owner and several time stamps.

 

[halloleo]

Unless you need to use the drives on a PC, formatting to ext4 would be preferred for backup as it is Linux native, preserves permissions, and has journaling. That's what I do. If I need PC access (unlikely), I'll use an ext4 driver.

I think that is what I will do too. If I want to read the stuff from my Mac I use a Linux VM, I guess...

Comparison of file systems - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Thx for the link - Wikipedia is so often a great resource!

I think I still will go with ext4, because it is the Syno standard for external disks - and if I need to read it from my Mac I'll use, as mentioned above, a Linux VM.

 

[Deleted member 5784]

Also worth pointing out that if for your backups you're using HyperBackup and the multi-version backup that creates a single.hbk file, the file format / metadata issue becomes moot as iiuc the file metadata (permissions etc) is stored along with the data itself in the .hbk bundle. You're not relying on the file system doing this for you other than for the single .hbk file itself.
So you should be fine using exFAT fs for this mode of backup.

 

[Coop777]

correct me if I am wrong..but I believe exFAT limits the size of files that can be copied over to an exFAT formatted drive.....may or may not be an issue in your situation.

 

[Deleted member 5784]

correct me if I am wrong..but I believe exFAT limits the size of files that can be copied over to an exFAT formatted drive.....may or may not be an issue in your situation.

The exFAT file size limit is 16EiB (16 Exbibytes). You were maybe thinking of the FAT32 4GB limit?

 

[Telos]

The exFAT file size limit is 16EiB

Damn. I guess that's the end of exFAT for me

 

[Coop777]

The exFAT file size limit is 16EiB (16 Exbibytes). You were maybe thinking of the FAT32 4GB limit?

yep, sounds right. xcuse my ignant.