Re: [gentoo-user] Good file system that recovers from a power failure.

[Walter Dnes]

On Sun, Jan 02, 2011 at 10:31:42AM +0800, William Kenworthy wrote

> I use "dirvish" for backups which creates a LOT of hardlinks which can
> be very hard on a file system.  ext2 typically lasts only a few cycles,
> while ext3 is only a little better even with full journalling.  Coupled
> to the fact neither is very good with power cuts and they are a worst
> case choice for data security :)

  Am I mis-understanding or are you mis-speaking?  hardlinks != backup
A hardlink is simply another pointer to the same tracks/sectors on disk.
If the on-disk data is destroyed it doesn't matter how many pointers you
have to the data, it's gone.  A real backup is another copy of the data
on another drive, preferably external.

> Reiserfs3 by contrast is very very good, with only a few instances of
> problems over many years (since beore 3 was even in the kernel) - none
> of which have lost critical data or file systems (ext2/3 devs, are you
> listening :)

  I don't think ext2fs is being developed as such.  And ext3fs is mostly
a journalling system backported to ext2fs.  ext2fs was written way back
when in January 1993, and the specs were uptodate for then, but our
expectations, and disk sizes have grown since then.

> So, for me at least, btrfs is looking like the way forward.  Its in
> "testing" at the moment, but I am ready to move whole systems over
> to it.

  I'm on reiserfs3 for now.  Hopefully, it'll be maintained until ext4
or btrfs or whatever is deemed ready for primetime.  When that happens,
I'll do any new installs on the new filesystem.  If it works, don't muck
around with it.  Unless support/maintenance for reiserfs3 is dropped or
a new fs comes out with a feature I really want/need, I won't migrate
existing systems.

-- 
Walter Dnes <waltdnes@××××××××.org>