Timeline for What does ext4 metadata checksums cover?

5 events

when toggle format	what		by	license	comment
Oct 18, 2017 at 10:31	comment	added	pelle		It is for long-term storage. I have files I have kept around since downloading them to floppies 30 years ago. Have them well-covered by on- and off-site backups, but if a few bytes in a file are corrupt and I do not notice it for many years it can be difficult to find a good copy (depending on how well the various backup media have survived) so I would prefer to notice broken files as soon as possible. There is already a long list of bad files because I kept them on cdrom for a decade or two before gathering them on the current disk.
Oct 18, 2017 at 8:24	comment	added	Mokubai♦		For backup purposes you should always be thinking about redundancy. Depending on how important the data is you would have a second duplicate copy on your current machine, a local copy on-premesis on a USB hard drive or memory stick, and another off-site copy. It's up to you to be certain your data is safe, dont trust the dumb box on the floor to do it for you.
Oct 18, 2017 at 8:07	vote	accept	pelle
Oct 18, 2017 at 8:07	comment	added	pelle		Thanks! This sounds like a good thing to have, but I will need to keep looking then to have a way to keep my old archived data more safe. I do backups, but if I do not know when an old file becomes corrupted I do not know when it is time to read it back from the backup.
Oct 18, 2017 at 7:39	history	answered	Mokubai♦	CC BY-SA 3.0