Bacula-users

Re: [Bacula-users] filesystem for disk backups

2008-10-13 06:53:47
Subject: Re: [Bacula-users] filesystem for disk backups
From: Arno Lehmann <al AT its-lehmann DOT de>
To: bacula-users AT lists.sourceforge DOT net
Date: Mon, 13 Oct 2008 12:50:56 +0200
Hi,

13.10.2008 11:01, Lucio Crusca wrote:
> Hello *,
> 
> I'm about to configure Bacula 2.4.2 on a Debian Lenny server. It will backup
> on external usb disks (500GB each, the full backup is 60GB more or less).
> What's the best choice for the filesystem?

A question you can discuss forever :-) or just ignore...

Personally, I typically use ext2 or FAT32, depending on needs.

Journaling is - often - not very useful here, as it slows down 
throughput even more, and as long as you don't journal the actual data 
doesn't help you much in case of failure - I don't only need 
filesystem integrity for backups, I need to be sure of the actual file 
data. Thus, IMO, un-journaled file systems are ok for backup purposes.

> Is there one that maximizes
> available space? Can I just give bacula the whole partition /dev/sdg1
> unformatted?

Bacula needs a file system to work on. You could save partitioning, 
though (use /dev/sdg as a whole) but Iw ouldn't recommend that as it 
confuses others who need to access that disk.

You can tweak the ext2/3 filesystems to create a minimal number of 
inodes, which is ok if you expect to store only large files. That 
saves a bit of the capacity. You can also set the reserved blocks to 0.

If you need to be able to use the backups on windows machines, FAT32 
is the most reasonable FS, unless you trust the linux NTFS drivers. 
None of these FSes can be tweaked for maximum net capacity as far as I 
know.

Short answer: Use whatever you're comfortable with, and keep in mind 
that journaling can negatively affect performance and might not gain 
you any data security.

Arno

> 
> Thanks in advance,
> Lucio. 

-- 
Arno Lehmann
IT-Service Lehmann
Sandstr. 6, 49080 Osnabrück
www.its-lehmann.de

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