NTFS is considered pretty stable on Linux now. It should be safe to use indefinitely.

If you're worried about the lack of Unix-style permissions and attributes in NTFS, then getting BTRFS or ext4 on Windows may be a good choice. Note that BTRFS is much more complicated than ext4, so ext4 may have better compatibility and lower risk of corruption. I used ext3 on Windows in 2007 and it was very reliable; ext4 today is very similar to ext3 from those days.

The absolute best compatibility would come from using a filesystem natively supported by both operating systems, developed without reverse engineering. That leaves only vfat (aka FAT32) and exfat. Both lack Unix-style permissions and attributes.

DO NOT use WinBTRFS. It caused me some cryptic filesystem errors that I never found a real solution to. NTFS is the better option if you must have a shared disk, but I really suggest different partitions for each OS.

Please use different disks for each OS, you'll save a lot of time and trouble later. It can be done, sure, but you're setting yourself for a world of trouble in the future.

Just a recent issue

https://www.guru3d.com/story/dualboot-linux-systems-affected-by-grub-sbat-policy-changes-due-to-windows-update/

I would use exFAT for a shared data drive. Just don't use it for programs since it lacks unix file permission support.

Most compatible is FAT32 which is also the most limited.

I am not sure I would trust the WinBtrfs driver with anything important. What problems are you having with NTFS?

Linux has two NTFS stacks: NTFS-3G and NTFS3 ( in the Linux kernel since 5.15 ). NTFS3 is faster and more feature rich I think but that said it also lacks a few things. NTFS-3G is more mature and some people still report it to be more stable.

What's your Win 11 use case? If you don't need native performance I'd recommend Linux and BTRFS for everything and run Win11 off a VM. Dual booting is fine but I've personally struggled with allotting the appropriate space for each partition.

BTRFS works for me.

I tried NTFS, but Steam games won't run from NTFS partitions under Linux.

I've been using WinBTRFS for quite some time without issues. It seems a lot of people recommend NTFS. But be aware, if you plan on using it for things like games, NTFS will absolutely break at some point. It is not compatible with Proton and will break things like updates for Steam. It always has for me up until very recently. Valve also says the same about using NTFS for games. I'm not sure this can be fixed with the NTFS driver unless they do workarounds like renaming things automatically because some things Proton does are not compatible with the filesystem spec.

I've once tried WinBTRFS and on top of not making it work I still have leftover drivers that can't be deleted.

I just use ntfs3 and ever since tweaking steam so that it does not put proton compatdata on it I didn't have to reboot and run chkdsk for months now.

If you're worried about stability, I think the NTFS driver will probably be more widely used and tested than WinBTRFS. Of course, nothing is 100% bug free, and disks can fail at any time for no reason. Instead of looking for a stable filesystem, I'd suggest setting up backups such that a random failure every few years doesn't cause everything to be lost.

In my experience NTFS is the most stable, unfortunately. What issues are you having with the NTFS disk on linux?

WinBTRFS is quirky at best. For the better or for worse, you're better off either setting up a network share or sticking with mounting the NTFS partition.

ZFS > BTRFS

https://github.com/openzfsonwindows/ZFSin/releases