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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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

submitted 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months 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] 12 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

Zfs, absolutely, because you can send the data where you need.

I disagree completely with btrfs, because if something goes wrong, that's it, recovery is not pleasant. Zfs isn't perfect, but it has recovery modes.

Alternately, ext4, it's recoverable, safe, and with journaling it's solid on power loss.

edit: Other poster was right about bitrot and checksumming, stick with zfs, xfs is good too so long as you're not running a db.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

btrfs can also send volumes to whatever you want, even a file.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

How do you typically recover things on zfs vs btrfs? Also, is the out-of-tree kernel modules thing something you have to deal with or take into account?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

The out-of-tree thing is annoying, but most distros have zfs support as modules already.

I've never had to worry about zfs recovery when it wasn't a raid, it seems to be automatic, but you have zpool checkpoints, scrubs, snapshots, really a ton of ways to go back to a working state, and you can also try to recover bad files if you use the right techniques.

Look at zdb, it's pretty intense.