Re: What file system to use?
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1
On 2017-02-03 03:03, Ben Caradoc-Davies wrote:
> On 02/02/17 20:58, Ken Heard wrote:
>> I use USB flash drives and 480 GB SanDisk portable drives for
>> some backups. I started by using ext4 on one of the flash drives.
>> The next day I tried to boot the computer, but found that the
>> computer hung. Only at this point did I find out that those
>> drives are not capable of journalling.
>
> I use USB flash drives with ext4 for backups and have not had any
> problems with journalling. I have had at least one successful
> journal recovery, after an inadvertent disconnection before
> unmount. What problems did you encounter?
>
> I optimised my ext4 backup filesystems for a small number of large
> files (compressed archives) with:
>
> mkfs.ext4 -J size=4 -m 0 -T largefile4 -O "^resize_inode"
> /dev/sdb1 tune2fs -c 0 -i 0 -L Backup /dev/sdb1
>
> My /etc/fstab contains:
>
> LABEL=Backup /media/backup ext4
> noatime,noauto,user,errors=remount-ro 0 0
>
> Kind regards,
>
First I should say that the result I described in my original post
occurred in a computer with Debian Wheezy as the OS. I do not know
whether the result would be the same with Jessie, and frankly I am not
really anxious to find out.
Second, all these drives were encrypted with cryptsetup. Encryption
plus ext4 with journalling may have been too much to ask of the
operating system.
Third, the last thing I did the evening before the morning when the
computer crashed was to transfer a series of uncompressed jpg files to
a USB flash drive. I assumed that the transfer was finished when the
bang reappeared on the command line; so I shut down the computer. I
did not unmount the drive before shutdown. It may be that the
journalling requirements for the transfer were never finished when the
bang appeared, and were still unfinished at shutdown, thereby causing
the computer not to boot the next morning. I will never know now. I
did of course have to reinstall the OS starting on that day.
Finally, I discovered that trying to open an encrypted USB flash drive
in Dolphin caused Dolphin to crash. I had to use Konqueror instead.
I filed a bug report for the crash. I have never checked to see
whether the bug was fixed.
All the events described in my original post and in this one took
place in December 2014. I continue since then to use Konqueror for
such encrypted drives with ext2. This arrangement works for me, and
my curiosity does not extend so far as to find out whether I still
need to use it three years later.
Regards, Ken Heard
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v2.0.19 (GNU/Linux)
iEYEARECAAYFAliUBsUACgkQlNlJzOkJmTdZegCePvnEqZGsP+old2vKryH+Z60C
UzEAmwfpk6kBwCj7upU/uEfV4KF9GxjC
=K72B
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
Reply to: