On Thu, Mar 2, 2023 at 4:43 PM Richard Shaw <hobbes1069(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On Thu, Mar 2, 2023 at 2:25 PM Ranjan Maitra <mlmaitra(a)gmx.com>
wrote:
> Thanks to everybody. I recall discussion from several years ago on the
> benefits of software over hardware RAID. I had completely forgotten about
> UPS for this new machine. Btw, what happens if power goes out (and I do not
> have UPS)?
>
If you don't have a UPS, I would recommend BTRFS mostly because it's a
Copy-On-Write (COW) filesystem. EXT4 journaling only protects the
filesystem, not the files themselves. BRTFS does a checksum of the files as
well, and because it writes out a new file, if that's interrupted, you
still at least have the previous version of the file.
Depending on the type of files, you may also want to take advantage of
transparent compression. I know BTRFS took a long time to stabilize but it
works pretty well for stand alone and RAID 1. I'm not sure if I would trust
it for RAID 5 just yet.
Here in Canada, we often get short power hits, often from a vehicle sliding
on snow or ice into a power pole. That
often causes widespread loss-of-power just long enough to stop computers.
UPS means jobs keep going instead
waiting for reboot and filesystem repairs, followed by restarting jobs that
otherwise would be finished. Sometimes
systems don't come up without added work.
--
George N. White III