November 29, 20232 yr I've read extensively on the forums and on google, but haven't found someone with my exact, relatively simple interests... I have multiple large external hard drives (22TBx) and I have extensive scripts (using rsync) that do automatic backups when powered on (unassigned devices script) every month or so. My question is, what drive format should I use for the external drives? ***I would love to turn my current backup (based-on-changed-files) to verify integrity of backed up files based on FS checksums that would refresh files if bitrot occurs. I'm not extremely worried about accessing the drives from outside machines (windows/ntfs), and definitely don't have any computational limitations. I'm thinking BTRFS and ZFS would be my best bet, but: Can rsync backups use the FS checksumming built into these file systems to determine differences? (better option than rsync?) Does FS checksumming in BTRFS/ZFS happen automatically in the background without complications (outside of the unassigned devices gui)? Is scriptable command line FS checking easy for BTRFS/ZFS? (currently using xfs_repair for XFS)
November 29, 20232 yr Community Expert Btrfs and zfs create checksums based on blocks, not files, to verify them you need to run a scrub, cannot use an external utility
November 30, 20232 yr 16 hours ago, JorgeB said: Btrfs and zfs create checksums based on blocks, not files, to verify them you need to run a scrub, cannot use an external utility You could run file integrity / bunker on top of that and check the Xattr or something like snap raid. Rsync has its own -checksum switch but it slows down the process dramatically. If backing up ZFS to ZFS, you should investigate syncoid(part of sanoid) or Znapzend. Here is a similar thread: Edited November 30, 20232 yr by foo_fighter
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