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Comment by nullwarp | Hacker News Reader

I've lost data in BTRFS setups each of the three times I've given it a try over the course of 6 or so years. Root drive just became unrecoverable. These are all single disk setups

Meanwhile I've been running ZFS for close to the same time and have never lost anything.

I get it's an anecdotal view point but that's a very hard reputation to rebuild for BTRFS.

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Counter anecdotal view point, I've been using BTRFS over the last 4 years now on multiple drives and multiple systems. No data loss has occurred.

If it was so bad that nobody had positive anecdotes it would have to be nightmarish. It's like a car models reliability. A bad model new off the line is still liable to have years of trouble free usage just fewer on average. The difference between reliable and unreliable is the difference between 2 small negative probabilities over many iterations.

I really just don't care about anecdotal data bits like this, especially when these attempts were tried probably 8+ years ago under who knows what conditions. How long ago did you give up btrfs, how long has it been, since your 6 years of trying it?

I think you may have unearthed the problem with btrfs. I know little about file systems and I know it might eat my data.

If the btrfs failed for you, you’ll remember and likely won’t try again. I had that experience with a now defunct hard drive maker. After the second replacement one failed I vowed never again.

They probably should rename it.

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