The best RAID for performance and redundancy
In this article you will find out:
- Btrfs vs ZFS comparison
- how to protect your data
Are you ready? Let's read!
The Btrfs (or B-tree) file system is one of the most resilient file systems. It is currently the main competitor to the ZFS file system. These file systems are quite similar: the presence of checksums for data blocks, transaction groups, and a copy-on-write mechanism. In this article, you will learn the main differences and which one is better to use in certain situations.
1. COW
ZFS and Ext4 use the copy-on-write (COW) mechanism. That is, when a file is changed, the file system will not try to overwrite existing data on the disk with new data. All new data is written to a different location, and then the file system simply points to the new blocks of data, and the old blocks are recycled over time. In addition, these file systems have features such as cloning and snapshots.
COW also prevents data loss and file system corruption due to kernel corruption or power failure.
2. Pooling and RAID
Both file systems do not need a volume manager, raid, and other abstractions that sit between the file system and disks. This is more reliable than having a hardware RAID controller.
In addition, OpenZFS offers a convenient RAID mechanism. You can use RAIDZ1, which strips data across 3 or more drives with a single parity block. Thus, it can withstand a failure of up to 1 disk per Vdev. RAIDZ2 can use 4 or more drives and withstand up to 2 drive failures, etc.
Btrfs also has this feature and is called RAID, not RAIDZ.
3. Licensing
OpenZFS is not compatible with the GNU GPL license. And the Btrfs filesystem is under the GPL, which allows users to take the source code and modify it.
OpenZFS is licensed under the CDDL, which is much more liberal and allows users to modify and redistribute the code with a greater degree of freedom.
4. Communities and Companies Behind Them
The FreeBSD community, Illumos, Delphix, iXsystems, Joyent, and many other open source communities rely on OpenZFS. Thanks to the CDDL license, many other organizations can use OpenZFS without our knowledge.
Btrfs used to have Red Hat as one of the top managers of its community until recently. SUSE made Btrfs the default, and as such, they are still a thriving community.
5. Reliability
ZFS is considered a more reliable file system than in user experience Btrfs. The latter had problems with erroneous interfaces from the beginning to directly protect against data loss and file corruption.
6. Supported OSes
Btrfs is the file system for Linux, and ZFS is developed internally by Sun for the Solaris OS. In addition, it can be used on FreeBSD, Apple OS X, the open-source Solaris derivatives. At the moment, ZFS can also be used on Linux. As far as Microsoft Windows is concerned, both file systems are currently not supported by this operating system.
So, what to choose?
If you need security and reliable protection of your data, the best choice is the OpenZFS. In general, in terms of characteristics, reliability, community, etc. Btrfs file system is better.
Protect your disk data!
There is no need to look for complicated and expensive ways to recover lost files in any arrays; you can simply download DiskInternals RAID Recovery and export the recovered files to a suitable device.
This application has been constantly improving for over 15 years and never ceases to delight its customers with new features and capabilities. Satisfied customers constantly use DiskInternals services and highly recommend this application to colleagues and acquaintances. The application recovers data mainly from Linux, but also from Apple, NAS, and UNIX. Can recover data from RAID 0, 1, 0 + 1, 1 + 0, 1E, RAID 4, 5, 50, 5EE, etc. Disk imaging is also available here.
At the beginning of the process, you can activate the Recovery Wizard and feel more confident. Any questions you may have can be directed to technical support after you have a license, which can be purchased at any time of the day on the company's website and thus get more functions and capabilities.