Hallo, Antipodal.
Hoo, there's
always been controversy over this one.
Ext2 is more suited to flash drives, but has a tendency to spontaneously and very easily 'corrupt', without warning.
Ext3 is safer, in that it has what's called a 'journal'. You can usually recover ext3 file-systems; the command-line function
e2fsck makes use of this when it checks & attempts to repair anything that might go wrong. (Ext2 doesn't have this 'safety-feature'.)
As for
Ext4, well.....this is the one that's causing problems with Puppy finding its save-file/folder at boot time. There's several articles on the Forum about this in recent years; some of the others can no doubt point you in the right direction if you wish to peruse them.
FAT32; absolutely fine, so long as you go with the save-
file option. The save-file contains a Linux file-system inside it, of course.....which is what Pup needs.
If you want to use the more-modern 'save-
folder' option, the underlying file-system
must be a Linux one, i.e., ext2/3/4.
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Difference between the save-file and save-folder? The save-file is of 'fixed' size; if it gets full, and needs to be made bigger, you have to do this manually. The save-folder, on the other hand, will automatically expand/contract with its contents, all the way up to the size of the partition you're using...
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As a general rule of thumb, it's fair to say that
ext3 is probably best for 'standard' Puppies. I can't comment on Barry's recent offerings, but I believe most of them require an .img file to be written direct to an [unformatted?] flash drive, using the 'dd' command.....and this creates a FAT32 file-system in the process. (You need to be careful when you use this; it's not known as 'disk destroyer' for nothing..!
) Some of the other 'devs' have taken to using this method, too.
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As a last resort, there's what we call the 'quick'n'dirty' method. With this, you format your flash drive to ext2 or 3 with gParted.....not forgetting to set the boot 'flag'. Mount the ISO file, and copy the entire contents of the disk across to your flash-drive. Then, run the Grub4DOS bootloader config tool, and tell it to look
only on the flash drive.
This is the way I've set-up my last half-dozen Pups. Flash drive
or hard drive, it still works just as well.....
Hope some of that helps. Any questions, ask away.
Mike.