tldr;
Is ZFS suitable for single disk use, or does ZFS make total data loss more likely than file systems like NTFS/FAT?
Why I'm asking/what I am trying to achive/understand.
I need some major space for nightly backup images. I plan on setting up 2 separate 1 drive pools (BPOOL1/BPOOL2) and imaging my desktop systems nightly on a rotating basis. That would give me 2 copies of my data. If one pool gets corrupted/disk dies, I would have another copy from the prior day on the other pool. This data will only be accessed if something happens to one of the desktop systems.
Can someone comment on the relative data security of a single disk ZFS pool vs keeping the same data on a NTFS/FAT32 volume?
ZFS can detect bit rot where as NTFS can't, but is there a downside to ZFS over other file systems?
While I know it is possible to loose a whole disk (head crash/motor/electronics failure), my experience has been that I usually get an error on one or two files before the whole drive goes and I can copy the data off the rest of the disk.
What about ZFS? If the disk happens to develop a bad spot and one or two files get corrupted, does this prevent access to the rest of the volume or would I be able to copy the data off the rest of the disk? In the "old days" I used a brain dead tape backup drive that could not work past an error. If there was a tape read error near the start of the tape, everything after that point would be lost. Is ZFS reasonably fault tolerant, or does it depend on redundant disks to prevent total data loss? (Obviously redundancy is required to prevent loss of individual file corruption, but I'm OK with chancing that.)
Thanks in advance for any advice/assistance.
Is ZFS suitable for single disk use, or does ZFS make total data loss more likely than file systems like NTFS/FAT?
Why I'm asking/what I am trying to achive/understand.
I need some major space for nightly backup images. I plan on setting up 2 separate 1 drive pools (BPOOL1/BPOOL2) and imaging my desktop systems nightly on a rotating basis. That would give me 2 copies of my data. If one pool gets corrupted/disk dies, I would have another copy from the prior day on the other pool. This data will only be accessed if something happens to one of the desktop systems.
Can someone comment on the relative data security of a single disk ZFS pool vs keeping the same data on a NTFS/FAT32 volume?
ZFS can detect bit rot where as NTFS can't, but is there a downside to ZFS over other file systems?
While I know it is possible to loose a whole disk (head crash/motor/electronics failure), my experience has been that I usually get an error on one or two files before the whole drive goes and I can copy the data off the rest of the disk.
What about ZFS? If the disk happens to develop a bad spot and one or two files get corrupted, does this prevent access to the rest of the volume or would I be able to copy the data off the rest of the disk? In the "old days" I used a brain dead tape backup drive that could not work past an error. If there was a tape read error near the start of the tape, everything after that point would be lost. Is ZFS reasonably fault tolerant, or does it depend on redundant disks to prevent total data loss? (Obviously redundancy is required to prevent loss of individual file corruption, but I'm OK with chancing that.)
Thanks in advance for any advice/assistance.