Is UDF an ok substitute for ext3?

Question

I'm thinking of doing the UDF thing to share files between windows and linux.

Is UDF a viable option for /home Is UDF a viable option for / Can windows XP correctly read sparse files I created in linux from UDF

As long as it doesn't break things I was going to rsync my ext3 backup drive over to UDF so I can see it in windows is this reliable?

http://superuser.com/questions/39942/using-udf-on-a-usb-flash-drive — MarcH, May 15 '12 at 09:32
Should be closed as a duplicate of https://superuser.com/questions/45130/cross-platform-file-system — MarcH, Aug 13 '17 at 12:36

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 28 '11 at 13:57

2

You will be fine with windows 7, not so much with XP. See here for more details.

answered Jun 28 '11 at 13:57

soandos

What's worse is that I've never found an acceptable driver allowing for writing to UDF-formatted external HDs for XP. Otherwise it'd be awesome. – afrazier Jun 28 '11 at 14:12
Wikidia lists two (in the note section for XP) – soandos Jun 28 '11 at 14:14
Is 2.0 ok for xp if you only want read only? .. no sparse that's a big thumbs down for me. – sabgenton Jun 28 '11 at 14:17
Ok so vista and up is good. Now I just want to know if I can happily rsync my ext3 drive to it. – sabgenton Jun 28 '11 at 14:18
@soandos: I know DLA doesn't work, and I'm pretty sure that InCD doesn't. See [here](http://superuser.com/questions/150864/driver-for-writing-to-udf-partitions-from-windows-xp/180096#180096) for more info. (I'd forgotten about WriteUDF.) – afrazier Jun 28 '11 at 14:25
I dont know any more, sorry. – soandos Jun 28 '11 at 14:30

1 Answers1