[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,
-- 
Alistair Mann
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