Keep auto-periodic fsck's enabled on ext3 partitions?

[Glenn Oppegard <glenn@aktiom.net>]

Hello,

We have production machines that have ext3 partitions bigger than 
100GB. On our last kernel upgrade, we were surprised to see the 
machines do an fsck on all partitions even though they were unmounted 
cleanly.

Upon further investigation we found the tune2fs options that force 
fscks of partitions after a certain number of mounts, or after a 
certain period of time since the last fsck (6 months in our case). My 
question is, is it detrimental to disable these auto-checks and not run 
fsck periodically? The man page for tune2fs says it's not wise...but 
fscks on 100GB partitions take a loooong time, during which my 
customers' services are offline. I'm even more concerned for our new 
machines that have >200GB partitions, where an fsck will take hours to 
complete.

Anyone have suggestions or experience with this?

Thanks,

Glenn Oppegard
Aktiom Networks LLC
http://www.aktiom.net
Linux Virtual Private Servers for Professionals