Which file system for generic data storage?

[JonJ678]

I have a suspicion that the answer is trivial. I have about a terabyte of data to store, mainly backups. A lot of it I will probably never access again, but better safe than sorry. Speed is irrelevant, but I don't want it to corrupt over time.

The three I'm considering are ext2, ext3, fat32. Which one is most suitable?

I believe ext3 is considered more resilient, though I don't really see why a journal (which I think delays writes in order to structure them better) makes it so. Fat32 is under consideration on the basis that it's ancient and therefore probably reliable, but I clearly don't know what I'm talking about here.

Advise would be much appreciated. I was using ext2 but have encountered some corrupt files, whether this is the fault of the file system, the copy of ubuntu I'm running or a wayward overclock I don't know. It puts me off ext2 enough to make this thread.

Cheers

 

[JonJ678]

ZFS sounds ideal. Right up to the point where I realise it's not really available under linux yet.
DVDs however sound like a nightmare, I'll never be organised enough to manage that. Checksums with a means of repairing files which fail the periodic test is the way to go. I've had a look with google and discovered I don't know what to search for (rar/par relies on breaking the files up into pieces which I'd rather avoid), is there a more refined approach than maintaining two copies of everything along with an index of the checksum of every item?

Not a myth Super, fat32 cannot cope with individual files greater in size than 4gb. It refuses to write them, point dd if=/dev/zero at a fat32 filesystem and it'll stop writing at 4gb. Regarding windows and the 130gb partition limit this is quite good.

Thanks guys

 

[JonJ678]

If I lost the entirety of it I'd be annoyed, but it's less important than whatever I'm working on at the time which tends to be obsessively backed up in multiple places. Maintaining the data on two drives and periodically comparing them is probably the best solution I know how to implement, but I'd prefer a solution that uses 20% to 50% more space instead.

 

[JonJ678]

With a slight change I think that's the approach I will take, thank you whitecrook.

I'll go for two drives, each with the same data and each with an index of checksum. Cheaper than a 2tb drive, and protects against drive failure. As covered this suits me better than raid 1. It's also within my limited scripting ability, so all is well.

Cheers