> My original motivation was preventing bitrot, but I've since seen that rationale called into question[0]. The article is interesting in his contrarian view,

> My original motivation was preventing bitrot, but I've since seen that rationale called into question[0]. The article is interesting in his contrarian view, however, when it comes to bitrot, it counters anecdata with other anecdata: > One bit flip will easily be detected and corrected, so we’re talking about a scenario where multiple bit flips happen in close proximity and in such a manner that it is still mathematically valid. While it is a possible scenario, it is also very unlikely. A drive that has this many bit errors in close proximity is likely to be failing I detected bitrot once or twice, and in neither case the drive was failing. This is anecdata though - is it valid? Who knows. I'm personally skeptical about blanket statements (which the author makes) without seriously backing data. I have a ZFS setup, and it's arguable whether it's a hassle in itself. At least for RAID-1 setups (I have two), once installed, it's not inherently harder to maintain than other FSs. Installation is manual, and that's definitely a hassle, but users are definitely intended to be advanced ones. Regarding SMART: it's not as easy at the article author states. I have a laptop that periodically pops up with new instances of a certain error, but the SMART guides says that this is not an error one needs to consider, so I'm confused. Additionally, the smart-notifier of Ubuntu (at least up to 18.04) is broken. I agree that SMART is important to consider, but it's not straightforward as it seems.