Journalling file systems

Question

Hi all,

a workmate (running Networker several years) told me that he's using journalled file systems in his server environment to accelerate incremental backup speed. From my knowledge I'd say file system journals are tracking open files to keep fs consistency and to speed up fsck on large disks after a crash. These journal entries are deleted after a write is complete, right? Are there any (stable) file systems that speed up incremental backups by using a fs journal? I can't really imagine but perhaps has anyone heard of something like this?!?

Best regards.

ble1 · Answer

They are not tracking open files (you may have mixed that with VSS), but rather changed files and they are file system property. I assume he was referring to NTFS (Windows) in which case journals are indeed helping with speed of incremental backups. Check 'Windows Change Journal' chapter in administration guide and also MS KB for more details (even admin guide should be enough). I can confirm incremental/differential backups are faster and we no longer see typical issues with archive bits which we had in past (so data volume decreased too). Also issue with renaming is fixed which used to be an issue before.

NetWorker

Journalling file systems

Was this post helpful?