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?"

Comments

The best archival filesystem

[Helvidius]

I have heard that the most permanent way of preserving data for long, LONG time is to write your data in stone. Granite being one of the best. Aside from that, computer data will lost a much shorter time than even the printed word. So buy some acid-free, archival quality paper and print those bits out!

Of course, that's just my opinion--then again, I could be wrong.

Re:Worry about the hardware, not software

[Gothmolly]

Dude, I'm sure you could find all that pr0n on the Internet again if you had to. Let it go.