Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
However qcow also allows compression, sparse files,
encryption and copy-on-write snapshots (COW, hence the
name) [...]
This is not meant to detract from your well-made point that
the qcow2 format provides many benefits over raw filesystem
images. :)
Tangentially, the qemu-img(1) man page says of the
encryption support:
The use of encryption in qcow and qcow2 images is
considered to be flawed by modern cryptography
standards, suffering from a number of design problems:
[...]
Use of qcow / qcow2 encryption is thus strongly
discouraged. Users are recommended to use an alternative
encryption technology such as the Linux dm-crypt / LUKS
system.
--
Todd