Re: alternative file systems
Reco <recoverym4n@gmail.com> writes:
>> One of the disadvantages with mdadm is that it can severely impact
>> performance.
>
> Agreed. Still, I view RAID as a disaster prevention tool first, and any
> performance increases come only second if they do at all.
Yes --- disk failures are so frequent that there's no way to do without
the redundancy RAID provides. Just the day before yesterday I've seen
yet another disk failing.
It was even an unusual failure in that there were no signs of it
failing. It's still being detected but has all of a sudden become
completely unaccessable.
Fortunately, it's a software RAID which allowed me to plug in an USB
disk and another one as a spare: that sucks, yet it's better than
nothing. So software RAID has an advantage I'd have never dreamed of
because I would never use an USB disk like that ... It's really an
extreme case.
>> That doesn't mean that raid-5 with btrfs wouldn't have
>> this disadvantage, too.
>
> Sure. I'd only wait two or three years before trying it. btrfs by
> itself is interesting, it only needs to get rid of those 'experimental'
> labels IMO.
It might take another 10 years or so. I wonder what the makers of
hardware RAID controllers are doing --- they should make hardware ZFS or
btrfs controllers ...
>> And not having the checksumming has never caused a problem for me, as
>> far as I can tell ... Still that doesn't mean that it hasn't.
>
> The morale of the story is that checksums are not a silver bullet.
Depending on how much data you have, not having checksums is like
accidentially shooting into your own foot, though.
>> So how can we safely store large amounts of data?
>
> As far as long-term storage goes - I prefer LTO7.
> As for the short-term storage - I prefer ext4, lvm, mdadm *and* a
> backup.
I've come to the same conclusion, though I prefer hardware RAID for
better performance. Such a combination of non-fancy tools currently
seems to provide the best compromise of reliability and ease-of use.
--
Again we must be afraid of speaking of daemons for fear that daemons
might swallow us. Finally, this fear has become reasonable.
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