Potentialy dumb question here, is there any benefit to using btrfs on a non system disk? I’m fairly ignorant on file systems, asfaik btrfs largest benefit is snapshotting, not sure of anyothers.
Potentialy dumb question here, is there any benefit to using btrfs on a non system disk? I’m fairly ignorant on file systems, asfaik btrfs largest benefit is snapshotting, not sure of anyothers.
I like BTRFS’s checksumming abilities and compression the most. BTRFS will keep track of every block of data’s checksum, and when you run a
scrub
it will detect bitrot. If you want to heal the bitrot you’ll need to run e.g. RAID1. RAID5/6 are not stable so don’t use those. ZSTD:1 compression is basically free storage with no downside, and can massively speed up file operations if you’re using spinning rust.Personally I run BTRFS on any disk that only needs a single drive, like OS disk or games drive. My NAS runs a ZFS array for any mass storage, which includes basically the same feature set as BTRFS, except RAID actually works and everything is a tiny bit better. A ZFS NAS isn’t very good unless you pump a decent amount of money into it to get it going, so if you’re on a tight budget I’d recommend MergerFS+SnapRAID backed by BTRFS disks, which is very similar to Unraid in terms of storage paradigm except free.