[robca]

What's the best file system to use for an external USB disk (it's a 500Gb 2.5" HDD connected with a USB-to-SATA adapter). Currently it's ExFAT (not sure why I chose that at the time, I read a lot of conflicting info on what's the best file system to use)

Should I use ext4 instead? Ideally I'd like to be able to also use that disk for Windows... how good is LibreElec's NTFS support (read and write)? I know I can install utilities to read ext4 on Windows, but not all my PCs have that installed

I wonder if ExFat can cause the freeze problems I'm seeing (but would be weird that recording is never affected), so I'm tryin gto eliminate all possible sources of problems

ExFAT should be fine and is really your only option for read-write on both Windows and LE

I found an unused 100Mb 2.5" HDD at home, formatted with NTFS, connected to my Chromebox with another USB-to-SATA adapter. Used "cp" from SHH to copy a few files, then I played them using the Video function (not TV/Recordings).

I played ~8 hours worth of recorded content (most of it on fast forward), with no hard freeze. A few times the fast forward playback seems to freeze for a second, but then restarts just fine by itself (as opposed to freezing for 7-10 seconds, then aborting back to the menu). Definitely a massive improvement: I was never able to play this much before without problems

At this point I need to eliminate the potential problems: ExFAT or the USB-to-SATA adapter. I doubt that TV/Recording playback is any different from Video/files playback, so that almost surely is not a factor. I'm still puzzled about the fact that recording never seems to be impacted, but the issue seems to be the external disk at this point (confirming the fact that nobody else has problems playing those same videos, thanks again for your tests, Matt)

NTFS seems to work (cp copies fine, doesn't seem to be slow)... is there any reason why you are saying that ExFAT is the only option? Would it be a problem using NTFS for the disk I use to record TV?