deciding UFS vs ZFS

[RW]

On Tue, 22 Jul 2014 14:16:06 -0400
Daniel Staal wrote:

> --As of July 22, 2014 1:33:05 PM +0100, RW is alleged to have said:
> 
> > On Mon, 21 Jul 2014 09:23:42 +0100
> > krad wrote:
> >
> >> You seem to be getting away from your initial statement, which you
> >> said zfs would make it worse, and journaled ufs. I really dont see
> >> this being the case, yes there are scenarios where u will get a
> >> screwed pool, but thats the case with any file system.
> >
> > Would you rather lose a third of your books, or a third of the
> > chapters from all your books?
> 
> --As for the rest, it is mine.
> 
> I'd rather not lose any of it, not even a single period.  

Most desktops that have a lot of storage have it filled with
multimedia, which is highly resistant to data rot, the OS can be
reinstalled, this is not a significant issue to most people.


> Which would
> mean a filesystem that can monitor itself for health and integrity,
> down to the individual file level, keep backups and changes, and
> repair itself.  Which is ZFS. 

I'm specifically talking about the case where a desktop PC is converted
from JBOD to ZFS without any redundancy.  

> The only real case of 'lose everything' under ZFS is if the disk goes
> bad - in which case you'd lose everything under UFS as well, most
> likely. 

When you lose some files from a directory it often renders others
worthless, for example losing a third of the episodes of a TV series
can be much the same as losing all of them. When a disk fails with UFS,
the directories on the other disks are completely unaffected.