Windows – NTFS vs ext4 for reliability

filesystemsUbuntuwindows 10

The reason for this question has to do with recent behaviour of a NTFS 1TB external drive I rely on for important production.

Since I work both on Linux and Windows (although primarily Linux-Ubuntu) I reasoned that NTFS made the most sense for compatibility reasons.
However recently have experienced strange behavior.
On windows a large folder would not open and then a couple days later the entire drive would not mount on my Linux desktop.

Ran chkdsk in Windows to repair the filesystem but I am wondering if NTFS is a good idea if I need reliability over convenience?

Best Answer

You're asking a wrong question.

If you want to protect against data loss (due to drive failure, malware, loss of power, user error etc.) the solution is to make backups. No filesystem is bulletproof. If you can't afford losing your data, make backups. As the old adage says:

There are two kinds of people: those who make backups, and those who will.

If you want to protect against downtime caused by drive failure, go for a NAS with two identical capacity disks in RAID1. Capacity of only one drive will be available. If any drive fails, NAS will alert you about this and you'll still be able to access your data on the second drive. Then you can replace the faulty one and NAS will rebuild it from the good one (takes between a few hours and a couple of days, performance will be degraded during this time).

Please note that RAID is not a backup. As the newer adage says:

If malware deletes all your files, RAID will make sure to delete all copies.

For full protection against data loss and downtime you need both reliable, known-good-and-restorable backups and RAID.

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