Im trying to put significantly large files on a large quantity of USB drives for students involved in ASB at my school. Can i use a Linux system to load the drives with the files and have full compatibility with windows OSs?

As long as you use a Linux distro that comes with NTFS with write support. (If not then you'll have to download it and add it).

It would be easiest to just make the USB drives FAT32, as long as you don't have files larger then 4GB then you should be good.

Of course with FAT32 you don't have any security in the filesystem unless you use 3rd party software....


I personally don't use and never like using FAT32 on external drives. External drives are prone enough to errors as it is...

Would Linux complete the task any faster than it could be done on a windows machine? I have 7 port hub that will allow me to copy to multiple drives quickly. Im not in a rush to load the drives because they wont be needed for a couple weeks but udoubtedly i have hours of loading to do and want to make it as efficient as possible.