After two days of research I'm about ready to just go with "something". I have a 3 year old box I'm sticking 2 1.5 TB drives in with a software raid to use as a NAS. It's going to sit in a closet and serve DVD images to my HTPC over gigabit ethernet.

Seems like XFS, JFS, reiser and ext3 are all contenders. Here's the thing though - I'm not going to run any speed tests. I just need to store a bunch of big files that I access occasionally when watching. I think I'm just going to close my eyes and click the "XFS" in gparted and never think about it again.

Do you think I'll have a wave of regret 2 months from now when I realize I totally chose the wrong thing?

Thanks - I'm just looking for validation here. ;)

I've been running xfs on multiple raids since 2004 and had no problems. But, you do need to put the nas on a battery back up as xfs can have problems if a hard power off occurs (never seemed to have an issue when it's happened though). Probably the best filesystem at the moment would be Ext4 until Btrfs comes out

My choice has been JFS (I have a 4x1TB raid5 with it), it has been absolutely rock solid, never had any problems, it survived a dieing motherboard and several system freezes/crashes caused by that.

These guys have chosen JFS for their monster storage raids too:
http://blog.backblaze.com/2009/09/01/petabytes-on-a-budget-how-to-build-cheap-cloud-storage/

ext4 seems very good too, but it's still too much the new kid on the block, for me with a filesystem reliability comes before anything else.

Avoid ext3, it's totally unsuited for large filesystems, a full filesystem check (which will be needed occasionally even with a logging fs, will take many hours, while with JFS its a matter of a minute or so).

I'd use Nexenta+ZFS for a NAS box, but for some reason I haven't been able to convince anyone around here that it's really the best way to go.

In linux, XFS is faster and just as reliable as JFS. Only people with external drives have experienced data loss after a power outage. All of your systems should be on UPS anyway.

Just don't use ext3 for sure, and ext4 is still too new.

In linux, XFS is faster and just as reliable as JFS

That's debatable (depends on what you measure) and in any case for a media server NAS file system speed is not really important.
full fsck time and deleting of large files are probably the only important benchmarks and JFS is very fast at both.
Also JFS has a much smaller memory footprint and cpuload during use (not that important on a 4GB RAM 3GHz dual core cpu system, but can make a difference on an Atom system).
I'm sure Backblaze evaluated XFS too, but they chose JFS.

I'd use Nexenta+ZFS for a NAS box, but for some reason I haven't been able to convince anyone around here that it's really the best way to go.

For a dedicated NAS box, yes sure ZFS on opensolaris is best (would be my choice too), but my NAS PC is also my desktop PC and I prefer Linux for desktop use.

OK cool - so I'll go with JFS.

One last thing - I have 2 1.5TB drives right now. I was going to go RAID-1 (mirrored), but after a little more research it seems like I should spend another $100, buy one more disk and go with RAID-5.

Any thoughts on this? I'm planning on using RAID as my source of backup, so I definitely want to have mirroring or parity happening.

OK cool - so I'll go with JFS.

One last thing - I have 2 1.5TB drives right now. I was going to go RAID-1 (mirrored), but after a little more research it seems like I should spend another $100, buy one more disk and go with RAID-5.

Any thoughts on this? I'm planning on using RAID as my source of backup, so I definitely want to have mirroring or parity happening.

It's a good idea to have some wiggle room when it comes to drive failures. They do happen. I've had two drives fail in 4 years. Raid 5 would be my choice

OK cool - so I'll go with JFS.

One last thing - I have 2 1.5TB drives right now. I was going to go RAID-1 (mirrored), but after a little more research it seems like I should spend another $100, buy one more disk and go with RAID-5.

Any thoughts on this? I'm planning on using RAID as my source of backup, so I definitely want to have mirroring or parity happening.

Buy another drive and go for raid5, as that gives you room for expansion, whenever you need more space you can just add another drive to your raid5 (with raid1 you would have to always buy 2 drives to add capacity).

RAID5 has rather poor performance compared with RAID10, as does RAID6. I suggest that 5 and 6 are only good for getting the most space out of disks, when you have 4 or more. I use for my HTPC RAID10offset. I have another thread here explaining how to set up a live system with it..

RAID5 has rather poor performance compared with RAID10, as does RAID6. I suggest that 5 and 6 are only good for getting the most space out of disks, when you have 4 or more. I use for my HTPC RAID10offset. I have another thread here explaining how to set up a live system with it..

You are right, Raid10 is certainly faster, but you have to take into consideration the purpose of the NAS the op is building:


It's going to sit in a closet and serve DVD images to my HTPC over gigabit ethernet.
[...]
I just need to store a bunch of big files that I access occasionally when watching


With raid10 50% of the raw disk space is used up for redundancy, while with raid5 it's only 33% (with 3 disks) or even just 25% (with 4 disks).
On the other hand a raid5 array is plenty fast enough for the purpose stated.
(raid5 write speed is relatively slow, read speed is fast)

Everything is a trade-off, capacity<>speed<>cost ... ;)

Each of my 5 disk raid5's can do myth commercial flagging on multiple hd recordings, handle 3 clients being fed HD video feeds and take gigabit ethernet transfers of video files without me noticing a difference in read/write speeds. So I would think the raid10 is way overkill, especially since you are losing half your storage and just paying more for electricity assuming each drive uses 8 watts and is always on.

On the other hand a raid5 array is plenty fast enough for the purpose stated.
(raid5 write speed is relatively slow, read speed is fast)
Well, will his array always be serving pictures? I would argue that once he gets that set up and happy he'll look into adding uses or expanding with some DVR app like Myth, and maybe set that up. Anyone can change their mind or expand their system tomorrow, and I suggest that we should operate on that assumption.

I see Ion and Celery --er Celerons-- recommended here all the time, and it doesn't make sense to me. Why build a headless microsystem, when for a fraction more power-draw you can have a system that will do anything, and is silent?


Each of my 5 disk raid5's can do myth commercial flagging on multiple hd recordings, handle 3 clients being fed HD video feeds and take gigabit ethernet transfers of video files without me noticing a difference in read/write speeds.
Commercial-flagging? Reeally? Flagging is mostly writes, and RAID5 is notoriously slow (http://linux-raid.osdl.org/index.php/Performance#RAID-5) at that. Hell, my system is noticeably slower with Myth menuing when flagging two, although video is unaffected as that's all done in hardware.


P.S. - I have had definite data corruption over a long period of time with XFS. I do not trust it anymore. EXT4 has too long a write-dwell to be reliable as well. Reiser decided to murder his wife, and so will be in the jug for a long time. I use JFS and it has been rock-solid.

I use JFS and it has been rock-solid.

Well there is finally one thing we agree on ;) !

Yes, in fact you'd suggested it to me when BTRFS croaked with all my data. Thanks tux.