File system beliefs are rooted in experience

[Ian Soutar]

I do installations for poor people of linux in Victoria BC Canada.   I 
was worried about the integrity of data because I cannot afford to 
endlessly fix file systems for these computers.   I went around town to 
ISP groups and others who ran large file systems on linux.   Everyone I 
spoke to suggested ext3 as the most reliable and everyone had lost data 
with these other file systems except ext3.  I spoke to about 8 people 
who were internet service provider tech support guys.

This matches my experience where I have lost data seriously on reiser 
and xfs.   My worst experiences are on reiser.   Now the common thing in 
my experience is that I used several laptops where power failures at 
in-opportune times simply happen and cannot always be avoided.  Laptops 
are becoming the main line computers of the future.

Ext3 has always survived and the journal has never been corrupted.   
However it is reassuring to know that I could drop back to ext2 to 
recover the data.

My strong belief is the the old and slow ext3 is by far the safer way to go.

Ian Soutar