Upcoming VENTOY release >= 22

[GCMartin]

@LongPanda pre-announces an upgrade, here, with the following changes.

3. Partition1's filesystem must FAT/exFAT/NTFS/UFS/XFS/Ext234
4. Partition1's cluster size must >= 2048

Must report

for "3.", above, If Partition 1 is formatted (for obvious reasons) as a compressed NTFS and ISOs are stored there, VENTOY will NOT find your ISOs. This requires an additional GRUB2 module load to fix.
For 4.", above, Cluster sizes for many SSDs or modern USBs are 4096 vs 2048

Also, for "3.", above, the default ExFAT partition format is NOT recognized by many Linux distros (and old MS, too), yet NTFS is recognized by EVERY OS for past 25 years. Thus when many ISOs when on their desktops, ExFAT cannot be used overall. And in some MS, MS doesn't know what to do with the ExFAT partition when one wants to use "format and ..." feature. I know the benefit ExFAT is suppose to provide, but this is NOT widespread as yet for old or new OSes.

Lastly for "3.", above, BTRFS should be added as GRUB2 knows how to recognize and address.

Hope this is wise information.

[Steve2926]

I think exFAT was chosen because of compatibility with MAC OS.

[GCMartin]

I think exFAT was chosen because of compatibility with MAC OS.

But that's one platform. I understand and there are other reasons one might use exFAT for some specific cases. And for use, PRIOR TO, GRUB2 v2.02, there was concerns for back-to-back blocking for ISO file storage.

BUT ExFAT is NOT universal. NTFS, for example, is universal. etc. And GRUB2 ISOs do not get upset if ISO file placement is not in back-to-back blocks.

[longpanda]

@LongPanda pre-announces an upgrade, here, with the following changes.

3. Partition1's filesystem must FAT/exFAT/NTFS/UFS/XFS/Ext234
4. Partition1's cluster size must >= 2048

Must report

for "3.", above, If Partition 1 is formatted (for obvious reasons) as a compressed NTFS and ISOs are stored there, VENTOY will NOT find your ISOs. This requires an additional GRUB2 module load to fix.
For 4.", above, Cluster sizes for many SSDs or modern USBs are 4096 vs 2048

Also, for "3.", above, the default ExFAT partition format is NOT recognized by many Linux distros (and old MS, too), yet NTFS is recognized by EVERY OS for past 25 years. Thus when many ISOs when on their desktops, ExFAT cannot be used overall. And in some MS, MS doesn't know what to do with the ExFAT partition when one wants to use "format and ..." feature. I know the benefit ExFAT is suppose to provide, but this is NOT widespread as yet for old or new OSes.

Lastly for "3.", above, BTRFS should be added as GRUB2 knows how to recognize and address.

Hope this is wise information.

1. Yes, compressed NTFS is not supported.
2. cluster size 4096 is better, Ventoy only request that the clustersize can NOT be less than 2048. It can be 4096/8192/....
3. NTFS is not supported by many linux distros. exfat was originally supported since linux kernel 5.4, so exfat may be supported better than NTFS in linux in the feture(although exfat is still not supported by many linux distros now)
4. btrfs is not supported by ventoy, it is not block based.

[GCMartin]

Hello @longpanda and the development team. Thanks, again, for all the great work that brings benefit to us.

Is Compressed NTFS a restriction in GRUB2? OR is the necessary support to recognize it just not added?

I would have 50% more space on the Ventoy Partition #1 and/or Partition #3, if I could format to that filesystem and have Ventoy list the ISO files contained.

Would you evaluate benefit, please.