This seems to be the only advice to be found on the forums regarding xfs or ext3 for an external usb drive on a linkstation. It would be more helpful if it were accompanied by some kind of reason. Simply saying to leave the drive formatted as xfs doesn't really help. Why should it be left as xfs?
I have lost data 3 times now using xfs because it does not tolerate physical failures very well at all. One of the losses was because an external USB drive (a seagate freeagent drive) was doing its own power management and shut off while the linkstation was writing to it. I Did not get anything back from the drive because the xfs structures were corrupted. Another time, the power went out, and the UPS battery didn't last long enough for a transfer to complete. Again xfs corruption prevented some of the data from being recovered. The last time was when a WD MyBook enclosure failed. The drive inside it still worked, but because it had been formatted as xfs, the physical failure caused corruption and some data was lost forever.
For reliability and recoverability reasons, I would also like to format an external drive on a linkstation as ext3, and it is offered as a choice. However, after I choose the usb drive, select ext3 instead of xfs or fat32, and complete the formatting process, the drive still shows up in the linkstation console as xfs.
Could someone please offer an explanation about when and why the linkstation firmware refuses to offer ext3 as an option, and / or why it fails to honor the selection of ext3 when it is offered as an option?