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Need a file system for a Raspberry Pi SMB Server

Hello! 
 

I’ve got a Raspberry Pi 4 which is configured as an SMB file server. It hosts my Plex Media library and personal documents I don’t want in the cloud. Its used by Windows, macOS, and iOS devices. It’s been working good so far however today I attempted to put a 22GB file and ran into the file size limit for exFAT (16GB). 
 

So with that in mind I know there are multiple other Linux file systems. Is there any file system that will give me read/write compatibility with macOS, iOS, and Windows 10 with a larger file size limit? 

Laptop: 2019 16" MacBook Pro i7, 512GB, 5300M 4GB, 16GB DDR4 | Phone: iPhone 13 Pro Max 128GB | Wearables: Apple Watch SE | Car: 2007 Ford Taurus SE | CPU: R7 5700X | Mobo: ASRock B450M Pro4 | RAM: 32GB 3200 | GPU: ASRock RX 5700 8GB | Case: Apple PowerMac G5 | OS: Win 11 | Storage: 1TB Crucial P3 NVME SSD, 1TB PNY CS900, & 4TB WD Blue HDD | PSU: Be Quiet! Pure Power 11 600W | Display: LG 27GL83A-B 1440p @ 144Hz, Dell S2719DGF 1440p @144Hz | Cooling: Wraith Prism | Keyboard: G610 Orion Cherry MX Brown | Mouse: G305 | Audio: Audio Technica ATH-M50X & Blue Snowball | Server: 2018 Core i3 Mac mini, 128GB SSD, Intel UHD 630, 16GB DDR4 | Storage: OWC Mercury Elite Pro Quad (6TB WD Blue HDD, 12TB Seagate Barracuda, 1TB Crucial SSD, 2TB Seagate Barracuda HDD)
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I assume you mean SMB (Samba). Use xfs or ext4. Your file system behind samba shouldn't really matter, Samba will handle the communication and in turn compatibility.

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31 minutes ago, DrMacintosh said:

I attempted to put a 22GB file and ran into the file size limit for exFAT (16GB).

exFAT does not have a file size limit of 16GB, so are you sure that's the issue?

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23 minutes ago, BondiBlue said:

exFAT does not have a file size limit of 16GB, so are you sure that's the issue?

Well Windows kept complaining that the file size was too big for the destination file system. Doing some further digging it looks like that is in fact not a limitation of exFAT. Windows has never liked my SMB server, macOS has never complained. 

Laptop: 2019 16" MacBook Pro i7, 512GB, 5300M 4GB, 16GB DDR4 | Phone: iPhone 13 Pro Max 128GB | Wearables: Apple Watch SE | Car: 2007 Ford Taurus SE | CPU: R7 5700X | Mobo: ASRock B450M Pro4 | RAM: 32GB 3200 | GPU: ASRock RX 5700 8GB | Case: Apple PowerMac G5 | OS: Win 11 | Storage: 1TB Crucial P3 NVME SSD, 1TB PNY CS900, & 4TB WD Blue HDD | PSU: Be Quiet! Pure Power 11 600W | Display: LG 27GL83A-B 1440p @ 144Hz, Dell S2719DGF 1440p @144Hz | Cooling: Wraith Prism | Keyboard: G610 Orion Cherry MX Brown | Mouse: G305 | Audio: Audio Technica ATH-M50X & Blue Snowball | Server: 2018 Core i3 Mac mini, 128GB SSD, Intel UHD 630, 16GB DDR4 | Storage: OWC Mercury Elite Pro Quad (6TB WD Blue HDD, 12TB Seagate Barracuda, 1TB Crucial SSD, 2TB Seagate Barracuda HDD)
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1 hour ago, DrMacintosh said:

Well Windows kept complaining that the file size was too big for the destination file system. Doing some further digging it looks like that is in fact not a limitation of exFAT. Windows has never liked my SMB server, macOS has never complained. 

That's strange. Do you have any custom user based quotas configured? Windows should work perfectly fine with SMB provided the permissions are correct. 

Phobos: AMD Ryzen 7 2700, 16GB 3000MHz DDR4, ASRock B450 Steel Legend, 8GB Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070, 2GB Nvidia GeForce GT 1030, 1TB Samsung SSD 980, 450W Corsair CXM, Corsair Carbide 175R, Windows 10 Pro

 

Polaris: Intel Xeon E5-2697 v2, 32GB 1600MHz DDR3, ASRock X79 Extreme6, 12GB Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080, 6GB Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 Ti, 1TB Crucial MX500, 750W Corsair RM750, Antec SX635, Windows 10 Pro

 

Pluto: Intel Core i7-2600, 32GB 1600MHz DDR3, ASUS P8Z68-V, 4GB XFX AMD Radeon RX 570, 8GB ASUS AMD Radeon RX 570, 1TB Samsung 860 EVO, 3TB Seagate BarraCuda, 750W EVGA BQ, Fractal Design Focus G, Windows 10 Pro for Workstations

 

York (NAS): Intel Core i5-2400, 16GB 1600MHz DDR3, HP Compaq OEM, 240GB Kingston V300 (boot), 3x2TB Seagate BarraCuda, 320W HP PSU, HP Compaq 6200 Pro, TrueNAS CORE (12.0)

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3 minutes ago, BondiBlue said:

That's strange. Do you have any custom user based quotas configured? Windows should work perfectly fine with SMB provided the permissions are correct. 

No, I don't have anything special configured at all. It's just a guest writable local network share. It mostly has issues writing, I can read/copy from the pi without issues usually. 

Laptop: 2019 16" MacBook Pro i7, 512GB, 5300M 4GB, 16GB DDR4 | Phone: iPhone 13 Pro Max 128GB | Wearables: Apple Watch SE | Car: 2007 Ford Taurus SE | CPU: R7 5700X | Mobo: ASRock B450M Pro4 | RAM: 32GB 3200 | GPU: ASRock RX 5700 8GB | Case: Apple PowerMac G5 | OS: Win 11 | Storage: 1TB Crucial P3 NVME SSD, 1TB PNY CS900, & 4TB WD Blue HDD | PSU: Be Quiet! Pure Power 11 600W | Display: LG 27GL83A-B 1440p @ 144Hz, Dell S2719DGF 1440p @144Hz | Cooling: Wraith Prism | Keyboard: G610 Orion Cherry MX Brown | Mouse: G305 | Audio: Audio Technica ATH-M50X & Blue Snowball | Server: 2018 Core i3 Mac mini, 128GB SSD, Intel UHD 630, 16GB DDR4 | Storage: OWC Mercury Elite Pro Quad (6TB WD Blue HDD, 12TB Seagate Barracuda, 1TB Crucial SSD, 2TB Seagate Barracuda HDD)
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4 hours ago, DrMacintosh said:

No, I don't have anything special configured at all. It's just a guest writable local network share. It mostly has issues writing, I can read/copy from the pi without issues usually. 

16gb sounds like it might be the size of your sd card... or possibly its remaining free space. I have noticed that if you share the folder your drive is mounted on, windows will show available free space on your root partition rather than the external drive. I'm not sure if this is an issue with Windows' samba handling or just the way the protocol works... either way you might want to try sharing individual folders rather than the whole mount point.

Don't ask to ask, just ask... please 🤨

sudo chmod -R 000 /*

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9 hours ago, Sauron said:

16gb sounds like it might be the size of your sd card... or possibly its remaining free space. I have noticed that if you share the folder your drive is mounted on, windows will show available free space on your root partition rather than the external drive. I'm not sure if this is an issue with Windows' samba handling or just the way the protocol works... either way you might want to try sharing individual folders rather than the whole mount point.

I do have Samba configured to share only the root of the 2TB hard drive I’m using as my drive. 

Laptop: 2019 16" MacBook Pro i7, 512GB, 5300M 4GB, 16GB DDR4 | Phone: iPhone 13 Pro Max 128GB | Wearables: Apple Watch SE | Car: 2007 Ford Taurus SE | CPU: R7 5700X | Mobo: ASRock B450M Pro4 | RAM: 32GB 3200 | GPU: ASRock RX 5700 8GB | Case: Apple PowerMac G5 | OS: Win 11 | Storage: 1TB Crucial P3 NVME SSD, 1TB PNY CS900, & 4TB WD Blue HDD | PSU: Be Quiet! Pure Power 11 600W | Display: LG 27GL83A-B 1440p @ 144Hz, Dell S2719DGF 1440p @144Hz | Cooling: Wraith Prism | Keyboard: G610 Orion Cherry MX Brown | Mouse: G305 | Audio: Audio Technica ATH-M50X & Blue Snowball | Server: 2018 Core i3 Mac mini, 128GB SSD, Intel UHD 630, 16GB DDR4 | Storage: OWC Mercury Elite Pro Quad (6TB WD Blue HDD, 12TB Seagate Barracuda, 1TB Crucial SSD, 2TB Seagate Barracuda HDD)
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2 hours ago, DrMacintosh said:

I do have Samba configured to share only the root of the 2TB hard drive I’m using as my drive. 

that's what I mean, the mount point is technically part of your root file system on your main drive. depending on how you check for available space you might get different results.

Don't ask to ask, just ask... please 🤨

sudo chmod -R 000 /*

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1 hour ago, Sauron said:

that's what I mean, the mount point is technically part of your root file system on your main drive. depending on how you check for available space you might get different results.

It really shouldn’t be. The SD card is where my OS is installed. If the Pi considers its OS drive in the storage calculations for any mounted drives, that’s bad. 

Laptop: 2019 16" MacBook Pro i7, 512GB, 5300M 4GB, 16GB DDR4 | Phone: iPhone 13 Pro Max 128GB | Wearables: Apple Watch SE | Car: 2007 Ford Taurus SE | CPU: R7 5700X | Mobo: ASRock B450M Pro4 | RAM: 32GB 3200 | GPU: ASRock RX 5700 8GB | Case: Apple PowerMac G5 | OS: Win 11 | Storage: 1TB Crucial P3 NVME SSD, 1TB PNY CS900, & 4TB WD Blue HDD | PSU: Be Quiet! Pure Power 11 600W | Display: LG 27GL83A-B 1440p @ 144Hz, Dell S2719DGF 1440p @144Hz | Cooling: Wraith Prism | Keyboard: G610 Orion Cherry MX Brown | Mouse: G305 | Audio: Audio Technica ATH-M50X & Blue Snowball | Server: 2018 Core i3 Mac mini, 128GB SSD, Intel UHD 630, 16GB DDR4 | Storage: OWC Mercury Elite Pro Quad (6TB WD Blue HDD, 12TB Seagate Barracuda, 1TB Crucial SSD, 2TB Seagate Barracuda HDD)
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22 hours ago, DrMacintosh said:

Hello! 
 

I’ve got a Raspberry Pi 4 which is configured as an SMB file server. It hosts my Plex Media library and personal documents I don’t want in the cloud. Its used by Windows, macOS, and iOS devices. It’s been working good so far however today I attempted to put a 22GB file and ran into the file size limit for exFAT (16GB). 
 

So with that in mind I know there are multiple other Linux file systems. Is there any file system that will give me read/write compatibility with macOS, iOS, and Windows 10 with a larger file size limit? 

If you connecting over SMB the filesustem won't matter.

I myself use btrfs, but if your not willing to learn how it works then ext4 is fine for the most part on a Pi

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