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Cake day: June 14th, 2023

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  • BTRFS has RAID built into the file system - instead of using MD you use BTRFS profiles which tell the system how to handle data.

    For instance

    • file system data (critical for the file system to function): raid1c3 which means 3 copies of core P file system data on 3 different devices
    • user data: raid1 (so duplicating all your data on two different devices)

    With this set up you could lose one device (of n, the total doesn’t matter), and not lose any data, and still be able to boot to recover with too much hassle.

    BTRFS does block checksums, can scan for bit rot and recover from it, and generally tries to make your data safe. It technically supports raid5/6 for user data, the issue is around unclean shutdowns and a potential write hole where you could lose data, but if your system has a UPS backup and is on a relatively recent kernel it’s not any more dangerous than MD raid5/6 as I understand it.