Are you sure? Since for PostgreSQL an atomic snapshot is enough. It is only when you do not have access to atomic snapshots that you strictly need to use the on

Are you sure? Since for PostgreSQL an atomic snapshot is enough. It is only when you do not have access to atomic snapshots that you strictly need to use the online backup api. And, yes, it will have to do a crash recovery when you first use the backup but if you cannot trust crash recovery you can't really trust your database at all.