Comment by alkonaut
10 years ago
The article only mentions Linux/Posix systems, are the same problems also present in Windows/NTFS? I was under the impression that, for example, renames on ntfs were crash safe and atomic, which would make the "write temp file then rename to target" work even if the power is cut?
NTFS is not very safe. No data integrity checksums. I think it's about same level as ext4 mostly. Meaning not very good. One shouldn't trust any critical data on NTFS without checksums and duplication.
NTFS consistency checks and recovery are pretty good. But they won't bring your data back.
Microsoft's ReFS (Reliable File System) might give storage reliability to Windows one day. On Linux you can use ZFS or btrfs (with some reservations) today.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReFS
> ...work even if the power is cut?
If power is cut during NTFS logfile update, all bets are off. Hard disks can and will do weird things when losing power unexpectedly. That includes writing incorrect data, corrupting nearby blocks, corrupting any blocks, etc. That includes earlier logfile data, including checkpoints.