Re: Can Debian Backup ntfs File System?
On Wed, 05 Jan 2011 14:49:43 +0200, Dotan Cohen wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 29, 2010 at 13:09, Camaleón 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!
Well, it is.
Is the user who has to value his/her work (something that I find
important can have zero value your you, for instance).
And common sense has to be applied for all the aspects in the life, not
just "computers". Let me use an example to illustrate this.
Imagine there is an elderly and experienced writer that is still using
his old and trustworthy Olivetti typing machine for his work. He has to
publish a new book before the end of this year and he starts by making
some drafts and manual annotations about the book's main story. Then, he
starts typing the firsts chapters of the book with his Olivetti, and
reaches 100 pages...
At this point, the writer can:
a) Do nothing and wait for the best, he is a very organized person and
thinks nothing can happen to the hundred pages he already wrote.
b) Go to the store and make a couple of photocopies, just in case.
Well, this is the same diatribe that every computer user has to face for
his data but still, this has nothing to do with the user's computer
abilities (there are many easy -and automated- ways for dealing with
this) but his interest.
The same happens with the elderly writer: there is no need to be the
smartest people in the world nor being a literate in any specific field
to care about your work (and your time) and be careful enough to prevent
any disaster.
So, no... people who pretend to give "value" to his data and has not
performed a single backup copy of his files in years, I just simply say,
"heck, no, those files weren't that important".
>> 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.
Yes, NTFS under linux (ntfs-3g) is not my favourite way for working with
NTFS volumes. I always let windows itself to manage and perform the
required diagnostic operations when I have to handle this file system.
> 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.
Well, I was not meant to say NTFS is the best file system in the
world :-), just is not that fragile as people tends to think or as FAT
was.
Greetings,
--
Camaleón
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