[Gllug] Linux equivalent of OS X filesystem Directory

[Alistair Mann]

gunzip wrote:
> For a long time now I've toyed with the idea of ditching OS X and using 
> Linux exclusively instead of purely for server work. The graphics/font 
> rendering has always held me back but recently I've encountered a bigger 
> factor which may encourage me to switch once and for all - Directory 
> corrution/drive failure frequency with OS X. This year I've had 2 failures 
> on my dual 2Ghz G5 and in both cases the pattern seems to be the same, ie. 
> the filesystem Directory becomes corrupted and the volume won't boot. My 
> disks also seem to acquire bad sectors faster under OS X but this could be 
> my imagination.

I've always associated bad block issues with 'physical' problems on the
platters rather than the normal, if unintended, operation of software:
electrical spike damage seem to burn out specific blocks; physical
damage such as head collisions and other debris see first a few, then
later more and more blocks marked bad. Electrical and physical damage is
not associated with any particular OS, so in my mind your drive failures
and OS choice are coincidental.

In days of old, we used to reformat a drive with bad blocks and see if
they went away, reusing the drive if they did. These days, any drives of
mine with even a single bad block get thrown away. Maybe because drives
are cheaper, maybe because time is more expensive...

>
> My question is whether Linux works similarly with a filesystem
> directory
> which is equally vulnerable to corruption when bad sectors creep into
> the
> disk or is this vulnerability perculiar to OS X?

I saw ReiserFS mentioned as one to avoid elsewhere, and I would agree,
for another reason: it is more unforgiving when it comes to recovering
accidentally deleted (and unaccountably not backed up!) files compared
to ext2/3.

Cheers,
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