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.
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For use with steam on linux (i store my games on it)
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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?
I just use BTRFS. There's an open source driver for Windows you can install.
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?
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.
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 errorI also installed winbtrfs with chocolatey but the drive fails to show up once plugged in and i dont see the drive anywhere
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.
Yeah it seems like it was a permissions error. I set the tight permissions and now i have it working
- 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:
- 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.
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.
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
