Slashdot Mirror
File Systems Best Suited for Archival Storage?
Amir Ansari asks: "There have been many comparisons between various archival media (hard drive, tape, magneto-optical, CD/DVD, and so on). Of course, the most important characteristics are permanence and portability, but what about the file systems involved? For instance, I routinely archive my data onto an external hard drive: easy to update and mirror, but which file system provides the best combination of reliability, future-proofing, data recovery, and availability across multiple platforms (Linux, OS X, BeOS/Zeta and Windows, in my case)? Open Source best guarantees the future availability of the standard and specification, but are file systems such as ext2 suitable for archival storage? Is journaling important?"
I don't know how to tell you this, but you're an idiot.
"There have been many comparisons between various archival media". ARCHIVAL is the key word. As in "we don't move these files around a lot". As in "It doesn't make much sense as an end user to discuss the undelying filesystem to something which is used to just have files sit around, as long as it's stable". Buy something that has dedicated commercial support for the next 20-40 years, like the LTO standard and call me in the morning.
----