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Which filesystem should I use for stable storage? (lemm.ee)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Hello everyone. I'm going to build a new PC soon and I'm trying to maximize its reliability all I can. I'm using Debian Bookworm. I have a 1TB M2 SSD to boot on and a 4TB SATA SSD for storage. My goal is for the computer to last at least 10 years. It's for personal use and work, playing games, making games, programming, drawing, 3d modelling etc.

I've been reading on filesystems and it seems like the best ones to preserve data if anything is lost or corrupted or went through a power outage are BTRFS and ZFS. However I've also read they have stability issues, unlike Ext4. It seems like a tradeoff then?

I've read that most of BTRFS's stability issues come from trying to do RAID5/6 on it, which I'll never do. Is everything else good enough? ZFS's stability issues seem to mostly come from it having out-of-tree kernel modules, but how much of a problem is this in real-life use?

So far I've been thinking of using BTRFS for the boot drive and ZFS for the storage drive. But maybe it's better to use BTRFS for both? I'll of course keep backups but I would still like to ensure I'll have to deal with stuff breaking as little as possible.

Thank you in advance for the advice.

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[–] [email protected] 46 points 1 year ago (13 children)

If you're not intending to use complicated RAID setups, just go with btrfs. There is no reason to bother with zfs given your specs and needs.

Do not go with ext4. Unlike both btrfs and zfs, ext4 does not do data checksumming, meaning it cannot detect bit rot (and obviously cannot fix it either). You'll also be missing out on other modern features, like compression and copy-on-write and all the benefits that entails. Once you start using snapshots for incremental backups using btrfs send (or its zfs equivalent), you'll never want to go back. Recommended script: snap-sync.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

The kind of data OP is talking about using won’t benefit much from the features of btrfs. That being said it’s still a great choice for them!

Also it will detect bitrot but it won’t be able to fix it unless DUP is being used.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Almost all data, aside from stuff like databases, benefits from filesystem-level compression, and almost every user benefits from having snapshots. Snapshots have saved my ass so many times, e.g. when I accidentally delete a file I shouldn't have, or when a program has overwritten a file it shouldn't have, or when Crusader Kings 3 corrupts my savegame.

As for bitrot, I frankly don't know if btrfs has an automatic mechanism of fixing rotten files from an external backup of the filesystem (created using btrfs send), but even if it doesn't it'll tell you what has rotted so you can restore the files manually.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

I use OpenSUSE Tumbleweed, and snapshots have been a lifesaver the 2-3 times when an update went bad (NVIDIA each time, go figure). A 30 second snapper rollback later and I'm back up and running.

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