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dzonga

external ssd's are good if you have multiple machines. you can just plug in / out your primary drive

say a ubuntu desktop, a macbook air and a windows laptop.

yeah file formats becomes a hinderance -- but they all can read exFAT at decent performance.

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>say a ubuntu desktop, a macbook air and a windows [...] -- but they all can read exFAT at decent performance.

Fyi, it's somewhat common knowledge in tech circles that exFAT is an unreliable way of permanently sharing data between different operating systems: https://www.google.com/search?q=exfat+corruption+macos+windo...

exFAT is ok to use as a secondary file system for transferring/copying data between systems (aka "sneakernet") but not as a critical primary disk drive.

EDIT reply to : >the more reliable file system to use if different operating systems need to use it is UDF

UDF like exFAT does not have journaling feature in HFS+ and NTFS. Without journaling as a self-check feature, it makes the filesystem very fragile and prone to corruption. Similar to this explanation:

https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/7609/what-are-the-...

For permanent data sharing between macOS/Windows/Linux, the more reliable setup than exFAT is network shares such as SMB/NFS mounts on a NAS with ZFS/btrfs filesystems. Unfortunately, that costs more money because of the extra hardware.

EDIT reply to: >If you just want to share files between 2-3 computers, by far the fastest and cheapest will be to wire the computers together over Thunderbolt.

When I researched the idea of daisy-chaining Thunderbolt with mac + Linux + Windows, I ran into stories saying it was not reliable. Example:

https://macperformanceguide.com/blog/2023/20230213_1022-Thun...

I could see where Thunderbolt daisy-chaining macos+Windows might work 100% perfectly for some but others have flaky issues because of various interactions of Thunderbolt chipsets, TB dock/hub quality, drivers, etc.

Which means the more reliable file system to use if different operating systems need to use it is UDF: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Disk_Format

If you just want to share files between 2-3 computers, by far the fastest and cheapest will be to wire the computers together over Thunderbolt. Forget the other networks, you just need a couple of high-$ cables.

Aren't there ext3/4 drivers for both windows and MacOS nowadays?

I use an external drive for my main desktop drive. It is pretty nice to be able plug it into my laptop, and access my desktop /home without even going over the network.

But, I never went all the way and got the install set up with drivers for both systems. I think that would be the dream. Only one filesystem to think about.

I wonder if there’s some clever overlay way to plug the drive into my laptop, boot off that, have it copy everything over, then unplug the drive, work for a bit, and then have it automatically send it all back next time I plug the drive in…

While we're here, are there any eHDD standards (and devices) that allow you to plainly read the SATA data from the drive, merely acting as a transport for the SATA connector itself? A fair number of them don't allow you to read SMART, for instance (I think this is terrible for a good number of reasons, but alas...)

From what I understand, many eHDDs don't actually do this, instead reading the contents of the drive and exposing them to the computer by essentially emulating a USB flash drive. I would have to sniff the packets to be sure, but this is what I suspect my eHDD caddy is doing.

My main reason for wanting this is that, in some cases, it would make reading random drives substantially easier -- I have amassed a collection of HDDs that all have different partition schemes, filesystems, etc., and a fair number of those are unable to be processed by my caddy. This is a very frustrating experience, as a Linux device has some of the best filesystem / partitioning support in the world (and a random £15 caddy is obviously not going to provide very good competition.)

On the contrary, having the kernel process the HDD as a block device would most likely place it under marginally more computational stress (as opposed to the drive reading partition tables and filesystems itself), but I believe that's been fairly well-optimized by now.

The standard you're looking for is UASP, which encapsulates raw SCSI commands over a USB connection. Most newer SATA enclosures should support it, they usually mention UASP in the product description if they do, since it has better performance than the older style which emulated generic USB mass storage.

iirc there are/were still issues because SMART is part of ATA but not part of SCSI so you need an extra encapsulation layer - smartmontools has code to send special vendor-defined packets because of this.

Ahh, Hacker News never fails to disappoint. Are there any ones you would recommend? A quick Amazon search yields a ton of rando-name products that I don't place much faith in -- the only brand name I could find was Sabrent[0], but that's only 2.5" and I suspect it's running the drive at 5v. My current one (which I believe is WD) has long since been liberated from its chassis, but it does have a separate 12/2 power supply as opposed to running the drive on the 5v USB connector.

On a positive note, I very much suspect the USB-C connector of being miles better than the Micro USB 3.0 interface my current caddy uses. In my experience, a bit of external force can easily encourage the connector out of the port.

> (and a random £15 caddy is obviously not going to provide very good competition.)

P.S. re this, I can sort of understand it, as the caddy came with a drive -- they clearly had the opportunity to optimize away support for filesystems that they weren't pairing the caddy with.

[0]: https://www.amazon.co.uk/SABRENT-enclosure-indicator-tool-fr...

How about this one from Sabrent? 3.5", USB-B, UASP, external 12v supply.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/SABRENT-enclosure-indicator-tool-fr...

I went through this exact rabbit hole in 2021 looking to out about USB enclosure CPU usage. As jsheard mentioned, you're looking for UASP. UASP has been around for a decade or more and even the cheapest USB enclosures should support it. I use a Sabrent※ that was $11USD last year.

※ Listed on Amazon as "SABRENT 2.5-Inch SATA to USB 3.0 Tool-Free Clear External Hard Drive Enclosure [Optimized for SSD, Support UASP SATA III]"

It’s literally called eSATA.

Could you please clarify this? I was under the assumption that eSATA was the name for the external [hot-pluggable] SATA connector. If memory serves, eSATAp was that, but combined with a USB plug. Very clever engineering, though the connector seems to be very rare these days (possibly due to SATA itself losing market share [in the context of ordinary people]).

> eHDD standards (and devices) that allow you to plainly read the SATA data from the drive, merely acting as a transport for the SATA connector itself

I'm a bit confused, but isn't eSATA exactly what you are looking for?

Even with a single mac, external drive is much cheaper and not much slower than built-in storage, and most importantly can be used to boot macos from it. Meaning, if your mac dies, you plug that drive into another mac and continue working

Also it's sadly the only storage upgrade option for models where storage is non-user-changeable.

Which is all of them now, besides the Mac Pro. The super thin MacBook Airs have the excuse that upgradable storage would add bulk at least, but there's really no excuse for a brick like the Mac Studio not having M.2 slots.

Have you seen the profit margin on disc upgrades. If given slots, no one will buy higher tier.

I wish modular support for filesystems in commercial operating systems was something regulated by the government.

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