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equalizer876

Member

Registered: 2018-09-11

Posts: 78

[SOLVED] Btrfs vs Ext4

Lately I started to try Btrfs. People say they like Btrfs because of instant snapshots (CoW). Well, let's assume I want to ignore the snapshot feature completely. There is also the checksum feature to mitigate corrupted files. That would be an advantage vs Ext4. The disadvantage would be less write speed because of CoW, am I right?
So I want to abstain from snapshots and only use borgbackup to do all of my backups. Is this usecase okay on Btrfs or am I doing something completely wrong and should better stick with Ext4?

Last edited by equalizer876 (2020-12-29 14:38:40)

Morn

Member

Registered: 2012-09-02

Posts: 886

Re: [SOLVED] Btrfs vs Ext4

I think real backups are actually much better than snapshots when using btrfs! At least that way your data is safe when something goes completely wrong with btrfs and you have to reformat the drive and start over...

fukawi2

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From: .vic.au

Registered: 2007-09-28

Posts: 6,224

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Re: [SOLVED] Btrfs vs Ext4

Snapshots are not Backups (though, they can be used to create backups).

If you're not interested in snapshots, then just don't use them, that's perfectly acceptable. There shouldn't be any noticeable difference between CoW and non-CoW for writes (if anything I would expect CoW to be faster, but I have no data to support that statement).

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Tétrapyle

Member

Registered: 2014-01-03

Posts: 53

Re: [SOLVED] Btrfs vs Ext4

I switched to BTRFS a few years ago just being curious about it. For my basic mainstream use, it seems just as good as EXT4, neither worse nor better. In my opinion, that's a good reason not to stick to EXT4, as a way to encourage innovation and alternative solutions. Now I use snapshots as well and find them very useful.

mrjnox

Member

Registered: 2019-01-22

Posts: 8

Re: [SOLVED] Btrfs vs Ext4

I think real backups are actually much better than snapshots when using btrfs! At least that way your data is safe when something goes completely wrong with btrfs and you have to reformat the drive and start over...

You can replicate a local btrfs subvolume snapshot to a remote subvolume:

https://btrfs.wiki.kernel.org/index.php … btrfs-send

equalizer876

Member

Registered: 2018-09-11

Posts: 78

Re: [SOLVED] Btrfs vs Ext4

Thanks. Then I'll stick with Btrfs for now. The constant data corruption mitigation sounds good enough.

Last edited by equalizer876 (2020-12-29 14:38:25)