Dualboot Steam Library Filesystem

[Cyber Raven]

Good Evening,

 

I recently upgraded the ssd in my laptop, and installed linux (nixos) on it, rather than reinstalling windows. I've kept my old ssd (1TB intel optane h10) in an external enclosure, with my old windows partition shrunk down. The remaining space (~650GB) I'd like to allocate to a steam library, however, I'm unsure what filesystem to use for it. The partition will primarily be used for linux, so I'd prefer a linux-native filesystem over ntfs.

 

I've tried exfat, but I'm having problems installing games to it. I saw online steam applies fat32 limits to exfat, so I have to use a different filesystem.

 

My next idea was to format the partition as ext4, then mount it in wsl2 and assign a drive letter to the mountpoint on file explorer. However, as the partition is on the same physical drive as my windows partition, I'm unable to mount it in wsl due to hyper-v limitations.

 

What other options do I have?

 

Thanks.

[Anglican]

Since you do want to access the drive on Windows as well as Linux, and WSL is being weird about mounting, your best option is probably just NTFS. Linux has a package called ntfs-3g that gives you support, here is how to enable it on NixOS: https://nixos.wiki/wiki/NTFS

[OhioYJ]

I second the NTFS suggestion, I use NTFS on all my data drives on my Linux machines. It makes the data easier to access from basically any OS or machine if need be.  No need to complicate it.

[Cyber Raven]

21 minutes ago, BepisChefis said:

Since you do want to access the drive on Windows as well as Linux, and WSL is being weird about mounting, your best option is probably just NTFS. Linux has a package called ntfs-3g that gives you support, here is how to enable it on NixOS: https://nixos.wiki/wiki/NTFS

 

3 minutes ago, OhioYJ said:

I second the NTFS suggestion, I use NTFS on all my data drives on my Linux machines. It makes the data easier to access from basically any OS or machine if need be.  No need to complicate it.

NTFS wouldn't cause any problems with proton would it? I'd like my steam library (including proton) to be entirely contained within this partition.

[BankHealthy]

48 minutes ago, Cyber Raven said:

 

NTFS wouldn't cause any problems with proton would it? I'd like my steam library (including proton) to be entirely contained within this partition.

 

 

AFAIK, NTFS should not be a problem. Both Linux and Windows should be able to access the partition.

[jaslion]

12 hours ago, Cyber Raven said:

I'd like my steam library (including proton) to be entirely contained within this partition.

As long as you install the ntfs package for linux all will be fine.