Hello everyone. I’m going to build a new PC soon and I’m trying to maximize its reliability all I can. I’m using Debian Bookworm. I have a 1TB M2 SSD to boot on and a 4TB SATA SSD for storage. My goal is for the computer to last at least 10 years. It’s for personal use and work, playing games, making games, programming, drawing, 3d modelling etc.
I’ve been reading on filesystems and it seems like the best ones to preserve data if anything is lost or corrupted or went through a power outage are BTRFS and ZFS. However I’ve also read they have stability issues, unlike Ext4. It seems like a tradeoff then?
I’ve read that most of BTRFS’s stability issues come from trying to do RAID5/6 on it, which I’ll never do. Is everything else good enough? ZFS’s stability issues seem to mostly come from it having out-of-tree kernel modules, but how much of a problem is this in real-life use?
So far I’ve been thinking of using BTRFS for the boot drive and ZFS for the storage drive. But maybe it’s better to use BTRFS for both? I’ll of course keep backups but I would still like to ensure I’ll have to deal with stuff breaking as little as possible.
Thank you in advance for the advice.
If you’re not intending to use complicated RAID setups, just go with btrfs. There is no reason to bother with zfs given your specs and needs.
Do not go with ext4. Unlike both btrfs and zfs, ext4 does not do data checksumming, meaning it cannot detect bit rot (and obviously cannot fix it either). You’ll also be missing out on other modern features, like compression and copy-on-write and all the benefits that entails. Once you start using snapshots for incremental backups using
btrfs send(or its zfs equivalent), you’ll never want to go back. Recommended script: snap-sync.ext4 + mdadm + dm-integrity would solve the bit rot problem. But you’d end up with a lot of parts bolted together and still miss out on the features that btrfs/zfs provide.
I just reinstalled my home lab server with Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. There was no choice in file system type.
Is it possible to convert from ext4 to btrfs?
If I should rather re-reinstall the server, how do I set the file system type during setup?
It is possible to convert from ext4 to btrfs, but if you just installed the server it may be easier to just reinstall.
Ubuntu setup wizard doesn’t offer btrfs, and the manual override requires me to set up all the partitions myself. I am not that good at Linux.
Been using BTRFS for several years and have never once had any sort of issue. i just choose BTRFS at system setup and never think about it again. I like that when I copy a file it is INSTANT and makes my computer feel super fast, whereas EXT4 can take several minutes to copy large files. This is with similar use to what you describe. No RAID.
I’ve been using ext4/btrfs for a long time,but recently I decided to give xfs a try and it feels pretty solid all rounder fs.
I know it’s a very old and very well supported fs,developed by Silicon Graphics and has been getting constant improvements over time with various performance improvements andchecksuming. TBH,for my use casesanything would work but BTRFS snapshots were killing my storage and I got bored with the maintenance task.
Archwiki has amazing documentation for all FS,so might be worth a look.
Ext4 with backups
It’s gonna be a hard decision to make. I know that because I read about Btrfs for about a whole week before deciding to switch to it. But, I’m a happy Btrfs user now for about 8 months, and I’ll be honest with you, in my opinion, if your application does not mainly involve small random writes that’ll make Btrfs inevitably fragment a ton, it is most likely good for any situation. I don’t know much about the other modern/advanced filesystems like ZFS or XFS to tell you anything about them though
btrfs and you get snapshots, the ability to send subvolumes around + compression and a ton of other stuff.
be aware that to configure a good layout in btrfs you will need to do that manually, follow the arch wiki and you will be ok.
A lot of these responses seem… dated. There’s a reason TruNAS and such use ZFS now.
I would recommend ZFS 100%. The copy-on-write (allowing you to recover almost anything), simple snapshots, direct disk encryption, and ability to not only check the file system, but tell you exactly which file has an issue if there is an error, make it an easy choice even if its a one-disk system.
Personally I use date times for my snapshot names, and delete old ones as time goes on. Its fabulous for backups.
Isn’t zfs out of tree?
Yes its license is not GPL compliant.
I use ext4 for my boot drive as that’s what Linux mint defaults to.
I do not do raids and use btrfs on my other drives.
You can turn on compression on write with btrfs which may reduce the amount of data being read and written to your drive which could further reduce its lifespan.
But you shouldn’t expect the drives to last 10 years.
They might, but don’t expect it and have a backup of whatever is important. Ideally you should have a local backup and a cloud based backup or at least an offsite backup somewhere else.
Yeah I’ll always do backups. When I have the money I probably will buy another drive and try to do RAID1 on the two, just to be sure. But I do want them to last as much as possible.
Don’t use raid for backing up use a backup program instead. I’d recommend vorta or kopia.
It wouldn’t be for backing up, just for the storage to last longer if one drive fails.
I would still not recommend it. If the drive fails and data is lost or corrupted it could also be lost or corrupted on the other drive.
It would really be better to use backup software to save your data. Also depending on how the drive is used, it may put less wear on the second drive if you use a backup application.
