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Recommendation for filesystem for USB external drive for backups

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  Recommendation for filesystem for USB external drive for backups rhkramer@gmail.com - 2020-08-13 02:20 +0200
    Re: Recommendation for filesystem for USB external drive for backups Keith Bainbridge <keithrbaugroups@gmail.com> - 2020-08-13 02:40 +0200
    Re: Recommendation for filesystem for USB external drive for backups Ben Caradoc-Davies <ben@transient.nz> - 2020-08-13 03:00 +0200
      Re: Recommendation for filesystem for USB external drive for backups <tomas@tuxteam.de> - 2020-08-13 11:00 +0200
    Re: Recommendation for filesystem for USB external drive for backups Mark Allums <maa@allums.com> - 2020-08-13 03:20 +0200
    Re: Recommendation for filesystem for USB external drive for  backups Charles Curley <charlescurley@charlescurley.com> - 2020-08-13 05:20 +0200
      Re: Recommendation for filesystem for USB external drive for backups <tomas@tuxteam.de> - 2020-08-13 11:00 +0200
    Re: Recommendation for filesystem for USB external drive for backups David Christensen <dpchrist@holgerdanske.com> - 2020-08-13 10:40 +0200
      Re: Recommendation for filesystem for USB external drive for backups Tom Dial <tddial@comcast.net> - 2020-08-13 20:10 +0200
        Re: Recommendation for filesystem for USB external drive for backups rhkramer@gmail.com - 2020-08-13 22:00 +0200
          Re: Recommendation for filesystem for USB external drive for backups David Christensen <dpchrist@holgerdanske.com> - 2020-08-13 22:20 +0200
            Re: Recommendation for filesystem for USB external drive for backups Greg Wooledge <wooledg@eeg.ccf.org> - 2020-08-13 22:40 +0200
              Re: Recommendation for filesystem for USB external drive for backups Dan Ritter <dsr@randomstring.org> - 2020-08-13 23:00 +0200
                Re: Recommendation for filesystem for USB external drive for backups ghe2001 <ghe2001@protonmail.com> - 2020-08-13 23:40 +0200
                  Re: Recommendation for filesystem for USB external drive for backups Jonathan Dowland <jon+debian-user@dow.land> - 2020-08-14 11:40 +0200
                    Re: Recommendation for filesystem for USB external drive for backups <tomas@tuxteam.de> - 2020-08-14 12:00 +0200
            Re: Recommendation for filesystem for USB external drive for backups rhkramer@gmail.com - 2020-08-14 03:30 +0200
              Re: Recommendation for filesystem for USB external drive for backups David Christensen <dpchrist@holgerdanske.com> - 2020-08-14 07:10 +0200
          Re: Recommendation for filesystem for USB external drive for backups Tom Dial <tddial@comcast.net> - 2020-08-14 04:50 +0200
      Re: Recommendation for filesystem for USB external drive for backups David Christensen <dpchrist@holgerdanske.com> - 2020-08-20 00:10 +0200
        Re: Recommendation for filesystem for USB external drive for backups Ben Caradoc-Davies <ben@transient.nz> - 2020-08-20 01:40 +0200
          Re: Recommendation for filesystem for USB external drive for backups Michael Stone <mstone@debian.org> - 2020-08-20 04:20 +0200
    Re: Recommendation for filesystem for USB external drive for  backups local10 <local10@tutanota.com> - 2020-08-13 21:50 +0200
    Re: Recommendation for filesystem for USB external drive for backups Andrei POPESCU <andreimpopescu@gmail.com> - 2020-08-14 07:30 +0200
      Re: Recommendation for filesystem for USB external drive for backups David Wright <deblis@lionunicorn.co.uk> - 2020-08-14 17:40 +0200
        Re: Recommendation for filesystem for USB external drive for backups Andrei POPESCU <andreimpopescu@gmail.com> - 2020-08-15 13:00 +0200

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#226151 — Recommendation for filesystem for USB external drive for backups

I'm getting closer to setting up a consistent backup plan, backing up to an 
external USB drive.  I'm wondering about a reasonable filesystem to use, I 
think I want to stay in the ext2/3/4 family, and I'm wondering if there is any 
good reason to use anything beyond ext2?

(Some day I'll try ZFS or BTRFS for my "system" filesystems, but don't see any 
point (and don't want to learn) either of them at this point -- I don't see 
much need for a backup filesystem.)

But, I'll listen to opinions ;-)

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#226152

On 13/8/20 10:14 am, rhkramer@gmail.com wrote:
> I'm getting closer to setting up a consistent backup plan, backing up to an
> external USB drive.  I'm wondering about a reasonable filesystem to use, I
> think I want to stay in the ext2/3/4 family, and I'm wondering if there is any
> good reason to use anything beyond ext2?
> 
> (Some day I'll try ZFS or BTRFS for my "system" filesystems, but don't see any
> point (and don't want to learn) either of them at this point -- I don't see
> much need for a backup filesystem.)
> 
> But, I'll listen to opinions ;-)
> 

I use ext4.   The advantage is journaling, which as I understand it 
reduces the chance of loss in case of power failure or the like. If 
you're using rsync, it will correct any prior bad copies (I think) at 
the next run.

On the basis that 1 back-up is better than none, can you cope with 2 
external devices?   As somebody else said in another topic, (approx) as 
long as you have a well tested spare lying around for when the main 
target fails.   Somebody put it more like this many years ago: There are 
2 kinds of drives around; those that have failed, and those that are 
going to fail.  Thankfully failure is getting rarer.




-- 
Keith Bainbridge

keithrbaugroups@gmail.com
or ke1thozgroups@gmx.com

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#226153

On 13/08/2020 12:14, rhkramer@gmail.com wrote:
> I'm getting closer to setting up a consistent backup plan, backing up to an
> external USB drive.  I'm wondering about a reasonable filesystem to use, I
> think I want to stay in the ext2/3/4 family, and I'm wondering if there is any
> good reason to use anything beyond ext2?

I use and recommend ext4. Journaling protects against filesystem 
metadata corruption, which can be caused by an electrical outage or 
system crash. ext3 also has journaling, but I see no reason to not use 
ext4. It is robust, widely deployed, and the default in Debian.

My backups are pigz-compressed tar archives, encrypted with gpg 
symmetric encryption, with a "pigz -0" outer wrapper to add a 32-bit 
checksum wrapper for convenient verification with "gzip -tv" or similar 
without requiring decryption. Archives are written to both external 
local storage and uploaded to cloud storage.

Because I have a small number of large backup files, I make backup 
filesystems to optimise for large files and maximise space: minimal 
journal, no reserved blocks, large file inode ratio, and no support for 
resizing while mounted. I also disable mount count and interval checking:

mkfs.ext4 -J size=4 -m 0 -T largefile4 -O "^resize_inode" /dev/sdb1
tune2fs -c 0 -i 0 -L Backup /dev/sdb1

I have this line in /etc/fstab:

LABEL=Backup /media/backup ext4 noatime,noauto,user,errors=remount-ro 0 0

Kind regards,

-- 
Ben Caradoc-Davies <ben@transient.nz>
Director
Transient Software Limited <https://transient.nz/>
New Zealand

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#226160

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On Thu, Aug 13, 2020 at 12:55:35PM +1200, Ben Caradoc-Davies wrote:
> On 13/08/2020 12:14, rhkramer@gmail.com wrote:
> >I'm getting closer to setting up a consistent backup plan, backing up to an
> >external USB drive.  I'm wondering about a reasonable filesystem to use, I
> >think I want to stay in the ext2/3/4 family, and I'm wondering if there is any
> >good reason to use anything beyond ext2?
> 
> I use and recommend ext4. Journaling protects against filesystem
> metadata corruption, which can be caused by an electrical outage or
> system crash.

...or by early extraction of the media. After all, it's USB sticks
we are talking about.

Definitely: if you have to ask, ext4 is the answer. If you really need
anything else, you definitely know.

Cheers
 - t

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#226154

On 8/12/2020 7:14 PM, rhkramer@gmail.com wrote:
> I'm getting closer to setting up a consistent backup plan, backing up to an
> external USB drive.  I'm wondering about a reasonable filesystem to use, I
> think I want to stay in the ext2/3/4 family, and I'm wondering if there is any
> good reason to use anything beyond ext2?
>
> (Some day I'll try ZFS or BTRFS for my "system" filesystems, but don't see any
> point (and don't want to learn) either of them at this point -- I don't see
> much need for a backup filesystem.)
>
> But, I'll listen to opinions ;-)
>

Go for ext4.  No reason not to.

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#226157 — Re: Recommendation for filesystem for USB external drive for backups

On Wed, 12 Aug 2020 20:14:03 -0400
rhkramer@gmail.com wrote:

> I'm getting closer to setting up a consistent backup plan, backing up
> to an external USB drive.  I'm wondering about a reasonable
> filesystem to use, I think I want to stay in the ext2/3/4 family, and
> I'm wondering if there is any good reason to use anything beyond ext2?

I use my external USB drives for off-site backup, so I use ext4 on top
of an encrypted partition.

http://charlescurley.com/blog/index.html

Start with
http://charlescurley.com/blog/posts/2019/Nov/02/backups-on-linux/ and
work your way forward in http://charlescurley.com/blog/tag/backups.html.

-- 
Does anybody read signatures any more?

https://charlescurley.com
https://charlescurley.com/blog/

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#226159

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On Wed, Aug 12, 2020 at 09:15:21PM -0600, Charles Curley wrote:
> On Wed, 12 Aug 2020 20:14:03 -0400
> rhkramer@gmail.com wrote:
> 
> > I'm getting closer to setting up a consistent backup plan, backing up
> > to an external USB drive.  I'm wondering about a reasonable
> > filesystem to use, I think I want to stay in the ext2/3/4 family, and
> > I'm wondering if there is any good reason to use anything beyond ext2?
> 
> I use my external USB drives for off-site backup, so I use ext4 on top
> of an encrypted partition.

That's what I do. Actually, I don't even partition: the whole stick is
a LUKS encrypted volume with a single ext4 whithin.

Cheers
 - t

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#226158

On 8/12/20 5:14 PM, rhkramer@gmail.com wrote:
> I'm getting closer to setting up a consistent backup plan, backing up to an
> external USB drive.  I'm wondering about a reasonable filesystem to use, I
> think I want to stay in the ext2/3/4 family, and I'm wondering if there is any
> good reason to use anything beyond ext2?
> 
> (Some day I'll try ZFS or BTRFS for my "system" filesystems, but don't see any
> point (and don't want to learn) either of them at this point -- I don't see
> much need for a backup filesystem.)
> 
> But, I'll listen to opinions ;-)

Without knowing anything about your resources, needs, expectations, 
"consistent backup plan", etc., and given the choices ext2, ext3, or 
ext4 for an external USB drive presumably to store backup repositories, 
I would also pick ext4.


But, none of the ext* filesystems have bit rot protection.  btrfs and 
ZFS do.


btrfs is supported by the Debian Installer.  I used btrfs for Debian 
system disks for several years.  I discovered too late that btrfs 
requires routine maintenance (to balance its binary trees?).  The disks 
got progressively slower and software started misbehaving.  Notably, 
Thunderbird began losing messages when moving them from an IMAP folder 
to a local folder (!).  I went back to ext4 for my Debian system disks.


Due to GPL and CDDL license conflicts, Debian does not support ZFS OOTB. 
  Notably, the Debian Installer lacks support for ZFS.  (Some brave and 
skilled people have figured out how to install Debian with ZFS on root; 
STFW for details.)  There is a 'contrib' ZFS kernel package available 
that can be installed on a working Debian system.  This makes it 
possible to use ZFS for most everything except boot and root.  ZFS is 
mature and reliable.  I use ZFS for FreeBSD system disks, file server 
live data, backups, archives, and images.  Migrating to ZFS was 
non-trivial, and I am still wresting with disaster preparedness.


David

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#226172

On 8/13/20 02:31, David Christensen wrote:
> On 8/12/20 5:14 PM, rhkramer@gmail.com wrote:
>> I'm getting closer to setting up a consistent backup plan, backing up
>> to an
>> external USB drive.  I'm wondering about a reasonable filesystem to
>> use, I
>> think I want to stay in the ext2/3/4 family, and I'm wondering if
>> there is any
>> good reason to use anything beyond ext2?
>>
>> (Some day I'll try ZFS or BTRFS for my "system" filesystems, but don't
>> see any
>> point (and don't want to learn) either of them at this point -- I
>> don't see
>> much need for a backup filesystem.)
>>
>> But, I'll listen to opinions ;-)
> 
> Without knowing anything about your resources, needs, expectations,
> "consistent backup plan", etc., and given the choices ext2, ext3, or
> ext4 for an external USB drive presumably to store backup repositories,
> I would also pick ext4.
> 
> 
> But, none of the ext* filesystems have bit rot protection.  btrfs and
> ZFS do.
> 
> 
> btrfs is supported by the Debian Installer.  I used btrfs for Debian
> system disks for several years.  I discovered too late that btrfs
> requires routine maintenance (to balance its binary trees?).  The disks
> got progressively slower and software started misbehaving.  Notably,
> Thunderbird began losing messages when moving them from an IMAP folder
> to a local folder (!).  I went back to ext4 for my Debian system disks.
> 
> 
> Due to GPL and CDDL license conflicts, Debian does not support ZFS OOTB.
>  Notably, the Debian Installer lacks support for ZFS.  (Some brave and
> skilled people have figured out how to install Debian with ZFS on root;
> STFW for details.)  There is a 'contrib' ZFS kernel package available
> that can be installed on a working Debian system.  This makes it
> possible to use ZFS for most everything except boot and root.  ZFS is
> mature and reliable.  I use ZFS for FreeBSD system disks, file server
> live data, backups, archives, and images.  Migrating to ZFS was
> non-trivial, and I am still wresting with disaster preparedness.

Debian ZFS root (and boot) is not *that* hard; see the instructions at

 https://openzfs.github.io/openzfs-docs/Getting%20Started/Debian/Debian%20Buster%20Root%20on%20ZFS.html

They certainly are not harder than installing early Debian releases (as
I remember it from around 20 years ago, and should not be hard for
anyone building a backup system and server. Installation as an
additional file system should not be notably different from installing a
file system package from main, except for the notice the GPL
incompatibility notice that will pop up during installation.

I would recommend installing from buster-backports to get the current
openzfs release which includes improvements (notably native encryption)
as well as fixes.

Tom Dial

> 
> 
> David

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#226174

On Thursday, August 13, 2020 01:45:59 PM Tom Dial wrote:
> Debian ZFS root (and boot) is not *that* hard; see the instructions at
> 
>  https://openzfs.github.io/openzfs-docs/Getting%20Started/Debian/Debian%20B
> uster%20Root%20on%20ZFS.html
> 
> They certainly are not harder than installing early Debian releases (as
> I remember it from around 20 years ago, and should not be hard for
> anyone building a backup system and server. Installation as an
> additional file system should not be notably different from installing a
> file system package from main, except for the notice the GPL
> incompatibility notice that will pop up during installation.
> 
> I would recommend installing from buster-backports to get the current
> openzfs release which includes improvements (notably native encryption)
> as well as fixes.

Two questions:

   * Most of my backup will be done from a Wheezy system -- can I install ZFS 
on Wheezy?

   * If I plug the USB drive into another machine without ZFS installed -- 
hmm, well I guess I'd have to install ZFS to use the drive?

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#226175

On 2020-08-13 12:52, rhkramer@gmail.com wrote:
> On Thursday, August 13, 2020 01:45:59 PM Tom Dial wrote:
>> Debian ZFS root (and boot) is not *that* hard; see the instructions at
>>
>>   https://openzfs.github.io/openzfs-docs/Getting%20Started/Debian/Debian%20B
>> uster%20Root%20on%20ZFS.html
>>
>> They certainly are not harder than installing early Debian releases (as
>> I remember it from around 20 years ago, and should not be hard for
>> anyone building a backup system and server. Installation as an
>> additional file system should not be notably different from installing a
>> file system package from main, except for the notice the GPL
>> incompatibility notice that will pop up during installation.
>>
>> I would recommend installing from buster-backports to get the current
>> openzfs release which includes improvements (notably native encryption)
>> as well as fixes.
> 
> Two questions:
> 
>     * Most of my backup will be done from a Wheezy system -- can I install ZFS
> on Wheezy?

I do not see any ZFS packages for Wheezy:

https://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=zfs&searchon=names&suite=all&section=all


The simplest answer would be to install Buster and then install 
'zfs-dkms' (either Stable or backport, depending upon preference).


>     * If I plug the USB drive into another machine without ZFS installed --
> hmm, well I guess I'd have to install ZFS to use the drive?

Yes.


David

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#226176

On Thu, Aug 13, 2020 at 01:09:46PM -0700, David Christensen wrote:
> On 2020-08-13 12:52, rhkramer@gmail.com wrote:
> >     * Most of my backup will be done from a Wheezy system -- can I install ZFS
> > on Wheezy?
> 
> I do not see any ZFS packages for Wheezy:
> 
> The simplest answer would be to install Buster and then install 'zfs-dkms'
> (either Stable or backport, depending upon preference).

The simplest answer would be to use ext4.

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#226178

D. R. Evans wrote: 
> Greg Wooledge wrote on 8/13/20 2:29 PM:
> 
> > 
> > The simplest answer would be to use ext4.
> > 
> 
> I concur, given the OP's use case. And I speak as someone who raves about ZFS
> at every reasonable opportunity :-)

Also concur. But by all means buy a spare drive and experiment
with ZFS -- just not on live data.

-dsr-

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#226180

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Hash: SHA256



‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
On Thursday, August 13, 2020 2:50 PM, Dan Ritter <dsr@randomstring.org> wrote:

> D. R. Evans wrote:
>
> > Greg Wooledge wrote on 8/13/20 2:29 PM:
> >
> > > The simplest answer would be to use ext4.
> >
> > I concur, given the OP's use case. And I speak as someone who raves about ZFS
> > at every reasonable opportunity :-)
>
> Also concur. But by all means buy a spare drive and experiment
> with ZFS -- just not on live data.

Two for sure and put them in a RAID1 -- formatted ext4. And watch that mdstat.

And a third or fourth to see if you can get ZFS going.

--
Glenn English
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#226189

On Thu, Aug 13, 2020 at 09:32:13PM +0000, ghe2001 wrote:
>Two for sure and put them in a RAID1 -- formatted ext4. And watch that
>mdstat.
>
>And a third or fourth to see if you can get ZFS going.

For playing around with tech, sure: for part of a mundane, reliable
backup strategy for the OP, and as an external, hot-pluggable drive,
I disagree, RAID is not a good idea for this use-case.

>--

PS your sig-separator is broken (missing ' ' after '--')


-- 
Please do not CC me, I am subscribed to the list.

👱🏻	Jonathan Dowland
✎	 jmtd@debian.org
🔗	https://jmtd.net

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#226190

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On Fri, Aug 14, 2020 at 10:31:08AM +0100, Jonathan Dowland wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 13, 2020 at 09:32:13PM +0000, ghe2001 wrote:
> >Two for sure and put them in a RAID1 -- formatted ext4. And watch that
> >mdstat.
> >
> >And a third or fourth to see if you can get ZFS going.
> 
> For playing around with tech, sure: for part of a mundane, reliable
> backup strategy for the OP, and as an external, hot-pluggable drive,
> I disagree, RAID is not a good idea for this use-case.

Absolutely. It's like jumping on your semi-trailer to go grocery-shopping.

What's a RAID good for? It's to ensure service continuity in the case
of a disk failure. Perfect for a server which has to be running 24/7
with as little downtime as possible.

Is backup a case for that? No. For backup, you

 (a) check the fs on your backup media
 (b) mount that file system
 (c) run the backup
 (d) unmount

When you discover your media is corrupt/broken, yon restart with a
new medium.

If you need any redundancy, you keep several backups in parallel
(which you keep physically separate, so your house burning down
doesn't catch all of them at once).

Adjust accordingly for over-the-net backups. Other variations
possible. No variation of it makes any kind of RAID look attractive.

Now if you are setting a backup server for hundreds of clients,
that's another story. I'd consider RAID for that (not RAID1, though).

If you want to play with toys, by all means, do it. That's what
we're here for. Backup doesn't seem the right playground for
this toy.

Cheers
 - t

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#226184

On Thursday, August 13, 2020 04:09:46 PM David Christensen wrote:
> On 2020-08-13 12:52, rhkramer@gmail.com wrote:
> > On Thursday, August 13, 2020 01:45:59 PM Tom Dial wrote:
> >> I would recommend installing from buster-backports to get the current
> >> openzfs release which includes improvements (notably native encryption)
> >> as well as fixes.
> > 
> > Two questions:
> >     * Most of my backup will be done from a Wheezy system -- can I
> >     install ZFS
> > 
> > on Wheezy?
> 
> I do not see any ZFS packages for Wheezy:
> 
> https://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=zfs&searchon=names&suite=all&se
> ction=all
> 
> 
> The simplest answer would be to install Buster and then install
> 'zfs-dkms' (either Stable or backport, depending upon preference).

Just for closure, that system has to stay Wheezy for the forseeable future, 
and then maybe TDE (I need to keep using kmail and kate from Wheezy). 

> 
> >     * If I plug the USB drive into another machine without ZFS installed
> >     --
> > 
> > hmm, well I guess I'd have to install ZFS to use the drive?
> 
> Yes.
> 
> 
> David

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#226186

On 2020-08-13 01:31, David Christensen wrote:
 > Migrating to ZFS was non-trivial, and I am still wresting with
 > disaster preparedness.

I should have qualified that -- when I used ZFS only as a volume manager 
and file system, it was not much harder than md and ext4.  You could put 
a GPT partition scheme on the external USB drive, create one large 
partition, encrypt the partition (optional), put the partition into a 
ZFS pool, create one filesystem inside the pool, and set the 
'mountpoint' property on the filesystem (ZFS does not use /etc/fstab). 
Use the filesystem like any other Linux filesystem.  If any bits rot, 
ZFS will detect them.  Do a "scrub" periodically (e.g. monthly).


On 2020-08-13 18:28, rhkramer@gmail.com wrote:
> On Thursday, August 13, 2020 04:09:46 PM David Christensen wrote:
>> On 2020-08-13 12:52, rhkramer@gmail.com wrote:
>>> On Thursday, August 13, 2020 01:45:59 PM Tom Dial wrote:
>>>> I would recommend installing from buster-backports to get the current
>>>> openzfs release which includes improvements (notably native encryption)
>>>> as well as fixes.
>>>
>>> Two questions:
>>>      * Most of my backup will be done from a Wheezy system -- can I
>>>      install ZFS
>>>
>>> on Wheezy?
>>
>> I do not see any ZFS packages for Wheezy:
>>
>> https://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=zfs&searchon=names&suite=all&se
>> ction=all
>>
>>
>> The simplest answer would be to install Buster and then install
>> 'zfs-dkms' (either Stable or backport, depending upon preference).
> 
> Just for closure, that system has to stay Wheezy for the forseeable future,
> and then maybe TDE (I need to keep using kmail and kate from Wheezy).


I did some more searching for ZFS on Wheezy.  See the second FAQ item:

     https://wiki.debian.org/DebianWheezy


Add this line to /etc/apt/sources.list:

     deb http://archive.debian.org/debian wheezy main contrib


Then run these commands:

     # apt-get update

     # apt-cache search zfs


Look for "zfs-dkms".


David

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#226185

On 8/13/20 13:52, rhkramer@gmail.com wrote:
> On Thursday, August 13, 2020 01:45:59 PM Tom Dial wrote:
>> Debian ZFS root (and boot) is not *that* hard; see the instructions at
>>
>>  https://openzfs.github.io/openzfs-docs/Getting%20Started/Debian/Debian%20B
>> uster%20Root%20on%20ZFS.html
>>
>> They certainly are not harder than installing early Debian releases (as
>> I remember it from around 20 years ago, and should not be hard for
>> anyone building a backup system and server. Installation as an
>> additional file system should not be notably different from installing a
>> file system package from main, except for the notice the GPL
>> incompatibility notice that will pop up during installation.
>>
>> I would recommend installing from buster-backports to get the current
>> openzfs release which includes improvements (notably native encryption)
>> as well as fixes.
> 
> Two questions:
> 
>    * Most of my backup will be done from a Wheezy system -- can I install ZFS 
> on Wheezy?

Probably. It probably would be a lot more work than on buster, work that
arguably would be spent better upgrading a system that is over two years
out of security support,

> 
>    * If I plug the USB drive into another machine without ZFS installed -- 
> hmm, well I guess I'd have to install ZFS to use the drive?

Yes.
> 

Regards,
Tom Dial

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#226313

On 2020-08-13 01:31, David Christensen wrote:
> On 8/12/20 5:14 PM, rhkramer@gmail.com wrote:
>> I'm getting closer to setting up a consistent backup plan, backing up 
>> to an
>> external USB drive.  I'm wondering about a reasonable filesystem to 
>> use, I
>> think I want to stay in the ext2/3/4 family, and I'm wondering if 
>> there is any
>> good reason to use anything beyond ext2?
>>
>> (Some day I'll try ZFS or BTRFS for my "system" filesystems, but don't 
>> see any
>> point (and don't want to learn) either of them at this point -- I 
>> don't see
>> much need for a backup filesystem.)
>>
>> But, I'll listen to opinions ;-)
> 
> Without knowing anything about your resources, needs, expectations, 
> "consistent backup plan", etc., and given the choices ext2, ext3, or 
> ext4 for an external USB drive presumably to store backup repositories, 
> I would also pick ext4.

If you want to access the backup drive from foreign operating systems:

https://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/filesystems-linux.html

https://www.howtogeek.com/112888/3-ways-to-access-your-linux-partitions-from-windows/

https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/29842/how-can-i-mount-an-ext4-file-system-on-os-x


David

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