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The ONLY time I've actually lost data, was with BTRFS, and only using it as a basic single-volume filesystem, no RAID, snapshots, or anything complex. BTRFS do

The ONLY time I've actually lost data, was with BTRFS, and only using it as a basic single-volume filesystem, no RAID, snapshots, or anything complex. BTRFS does not seem to recover well from media errors. I've had plenty of those, and always been able to recover at least partial data (minus the bad media) with other FS's.

codys 5y ago
I've also recently had bad experiences where hard-power-offs of a fleet of systems with a btrfs filesystem repeatedly cause corruption (resulting in the btrfs filesystem no longer being mountable) Some testing seems to indicate even ext4 is more reliable in the face of hard power cycles.
labawi 5y ago
I've had funny experiences with disappearing files on ext4 - reading a file while there are transient SATA errors (on a flaky SATA link) would cause a the file to be removed. To be fair, I think I've lost more data on btrfs.
ok123456 5y ago
And the "rescue" commands tell you not to use them unless you've been blessed by someone on a mailing list, and that they can actually cause MORE damage. I was using BTRFS on my workstation and all of a sudden some garbage got written to the extent-tree, and it was toast. Never using BTRFS again. I had backups and was able to recover 99.99%, but the recuse tools were garbage. I finally killed it after it had spent a month, from July 4 until August 4, doing apparently nothing. And this was this year. This was a normal desktop configuration, single drive. I wasn't using any of the real features of the FS other than COW.
jbotz 5y ago
How long ago was this? My experience about a year ago was the opposite, btrfs held up really well on a failing drive and I managed to copy the filesystem with 'btrfs send' without suffering any data loss or corruption as far as I've been able to tell. I also had a btrfs filesystem on an external drive with a lose USB plug that caused it to disconnect once in a while, and didn't have any corruptions or loss on that one either.

codys 5y ago

I've also recently had bad experiences where hard-power-offs of a fleet of systems with a btrfs filesystem repeatedly cause corruption (resulting in the btrfs filesystem no longer being mountable) Some testing seems to indicate even ext4 is more reliable in the face of hard power cycles.

labawi 5y ago

I've had funny experiences with disappearing files on ext4 - reading a file while there are transient SATA errors (on a flaky SATA link) would cause a the file to be removed. To be fair, I think I've lost more data on btrfs.

ok123456 5y ago

And the "rescue" commands tell you not to use them unless you've been blessed by someone on a mailing list, and that they can actually cause MORE damage. I was using BTRFS on my workstation and all of a sudden some garbage got written to the extent-tree, and it was toast. Never using BTRFS again. I had backups and was able to recover 99.99%, but the recuse tools were garbage. I finally killed it after it had spent a month, from July 4 until August 4, doing apparently nothing. And this was this year. This was a normal desktop configuration, single drive. I wasn't using any of the real features of the FS other than COW.

jbotz 5y ago

How long ago was this? My experience about a year ago was the opposite, btrfs held up really well on a failing drive and I managed to copy the filesystem with 'btrfs send' without suffering any data loss or corruption as far as I've been able to tell. I also had a btrfs filesystem on an external drive with a lose USB plug that caused it to disconnect once in a while, and didn't have any corruptions or loss on that one either.