this post was submitted on 08 Aug 2024
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I care a lot about filesystems.
BTRFS in FS-managed RAID configuration for automatic self-healing and snapshots for instant automated backups (though I keep a traditional backup too for protection against bugs and user error).
Storage is cheap compared to how much I value my data. BTRFS has very good support on Linux, integration with some backup tools, and I really want to use a FS that has full data checksums to make sure the data stays correct at rest. I like that I don’t have to use equal sized drives and can use whatever I have available, though I would appreciate a better read distribution model rather than the current where it just chooses a random drive to read from when multiple copies are available.
Disadvantages include difficulty accessing from Windows in my experience, less than stellar performance on HDDs, not very space efficient for small files systems because of the bulky metadata, and some uncommon RAID types don’t work correctly and will eat your data. I also don’t recommend it for use over USB because many such devices don’t correctly implement sync, and this is very important to stay on the correct transaction number and prevent file system inconsistencies. If I had to boot from USB, I wouldn’t pick BTRFS.
I don’t think exFAT or FAT32 offer POSIX permissions. I’m not sure if you could have a root file system there.
Have you seen/tried https://github.com/maharmstone/btrfs ?
I have heard it is decent but have never had a need to try it.
Yes I have and it caused file system corruption the two times I tried it. Something wasn’t quite right.
Good to know. I know a couple of people in the steam deck world who dual boot windows and steamos and have their games on a btrfs partition that use it so they don't need games installed twice ... I have no desire to do this so I have never tried.
It’s possible I was just unlucky, but data corruption makes it harder for me to sleep at night. I choose to be a little more conservative and consider that tool beta quality.
|I care a lot about filesystems.
Damn bro, I didn't think I was gonna cum in /linux
So, genuine question: why btrfs instead of zfs? Sounds like your use case would fit the latter.
BTRFS is zero effort on root, because it is included in kernel. ZFS on root is extra effort at least on Arch, due to licensing restrictions.
Additionally, at least for my use-case btrfs benefits me since it is less picky about drive sizes being the same and duplicating everything correctly - letting you essentially just throw additional storage at it as you acquire it.
Does ZFS handle data duplication on unequal sized volumes or heterogeneous pools? I don’t believe so, and BTRFS was a first class installer option.