Re: Can Debian Backup ntfs File System?

[Dotan Cohen <dotancohen@gmail.com>]

On Mon, Nov 29, 2010 at 13:09, Camaleón <noelamac@gmail.com> wrote:
> Last backup was from a year ago, that should give you some hints about
> how valuable is data for the user.
>

That is a hint about whether the computer is a tool or a lifestyle for
the user, it has nothing to do with the value of the data. I only wish
that the backup-valuable correlation were true!


> NTFS is quite robust. In fact, it survives better to unforeseen shutdowns
> than other linux filesystems. And again, if you are concerned about the
> "fragile" status of the file system, run the diagnosis tools in test mode.
>

Against power outages, yes, NTFS is very robust. But there are other
ways to screw it up easily, one of which is simply _writing_ to it
with an immature driver. I understand that today's Linux drivers are
better in this regard, but just a few years ago one would not want to
write often to an NTFS partition without booting it into Windows
occasionally for some error checking. The drivers are reverse
engineered and are not 100% reliable, or at least until recently they
weren't.

By the way, NTFS does not support some features of Linux filesystems,
and will fail silently while loosing data. Writing a filename with a
colon is one good example of how to get bitten by this. Permissions
are sometimes problematic as well.

-- 
Dotan Cohen

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