

Ask HN: Who is working on file systems for consumer level removable drives? - DanBC

Are there any groups working on creating a modern file system suitable for consumer use on external drives? (Especially on creating very simple cross platform support). Or on a simple tool set for fixing NTFS errors?<p>I want to support them with a smidgen of cash.  Who should I support?<p>FAT32 is available everywhere, but has some limitations for modern users, and these limitations are going to get worse as drives and files get bigger.<p>NTFS is nice, and is sort of cross platform.  But it's not  great choice for an external drive.  Unsafe removal of the drive while it's copying a file causes errors.  (Obviously; that's okay.)  But repair tools are not cross platform - the common advice is to run chkdsk on Windows.  (Allowing OS X to try to repair this can be sub-optimal.)<p>ext3 / 4 seem nice, but not easily cross platform.<p>btrfs seems nicer, but 'experimental' and 'unstable' are not what I want for my file system, and it seems to be aimed at use cases much bigger than a domestic user.<p>zfs seems really nice, but again aimed at users with much more than a couple of external drives.  And locked into one OS.
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jstanley
"ext3 / 4 seem nice, but not easily cross platform"

They're a lot better supported than any system you plan to create. Much better
to work on porting a proven filesystem to Windows than it is to design a new
filesystem.

