NTFS External Hard Drives Copy Problems.....

[TuxInAGalaxy]

I did some research by google.  I found some strange articles.  There was one guy that claimed that ntfs was better than ext4.  He also said that ext4 lost data.  Then I found some people saying everything is fine.  I just think not everyone is doing what I do on a regular basis.  Because if I think a drive is giving me problems I run tests on it.  The reason why I feel that ext4 external hard drives is the answer to my problem is because at least with ext4 I know that one can check it in linux.  I don't understand why but every time I did research I couldn't find anything in linux that would check a ntfs file system.  Also several months ago I tried to use gparted to check a fat32 file system on a flash drive.  It messed up the file system.  I reported everything to the gparted forums, and the developer is aware of the issue.  He gave me method, that I don't understand how to do, that can keep the issue from happening.  He also added that gparted is fixed but the fix never made it into the ubuntu repositories.  He wanted me to report it upstream.  I did that, but I have no idea if they solved the bug or not.  I don't have time to just test and test things... 

[TuxInAGalaxy]

When I started my external back up drives I was strictly a Windows user.  For that reason I changed the format from fat32 to NTFS.  My Drives are Western Digital - My Passport.  And I have a seagate put in an inateck enclosure.  Altogether they are 3 back up drives.

As I've been using Windows less and less, I've needed to copy files from my Linux computers to these drives.  There has been several times where I ran into an issue.  I'm on Windows, and then I decide to make a copy of a file that I copied over from a Linux machine.  Windows comes up and says something like Wrong Path and file name.  What is odd I can play the mp3 file, but can not copy or move or delete the file from the Windows 7 operating system.  The only way I was able to fix the problem is boot into linux mint or lite, and then delete the file.  After that I copied the file to fat32 flash drive, and then plugged that drive into the Windows machine.  After that I could copy the file with Windows over to the NTFS drives and everything went ok.

I've had stuff like this happen to me several times with Linux with various machines and distros and NTFS hard drives.  I've even had it happen on an internal drive. 

Linux Youtuber Joe Collins made a comment in a video saying that NTFS file system sucks.  Then he continued by saying that if your using NTFS then you need Windows to help take care of it. 

I got a lot important data on my drives, and I can't just reformat them.  I've been slowly buying more external hard drives and formatting them to ext4.  My idea is to copy all my NTFS data over to the ext4 drives.  In hopes that I will be able to use  fsck to keep an eye on the ext4.  As far as I know fsck doesn't work on NTFS drives. 

If anyone reading this can help me better understand what is the best action to take let me know.  Maybe give me tip or something to look for... 

I want to add just one more thing.  You may not think you are having the issues I've had, but if you think your data is alright then I would like you to double check.  Every now and then try using Windows to delete, or copy a file from a NTFS drive.  In my experience most of the time it works.  But every once in a while you will probably run into the issue I've had. Even once in a while makes me worry.