Should I use "Journaling" on my new backup drive?

[id-sign]

The setup for my new backup drive(300GB Maxtor) gives me a choice of "Mac OS Extended" or "Mac OS Extended Journaled".

I understand the journaling feature updates the backup with any changes you make to your main HD(right?). Will this slow down my work with all that disk writing going on?

Thanks!

 

[combatcolin]

journaling makes a record of what is on the rive for the search feature of OS X.

Makes search's LOT FASTER

 

[Fearless Leader]

For a backup I would say you dont need to journal, unless you want to find the files you backed up a lot faster. If your using an application to back-up then journal the drive, you wont notice any speed diffrence. If you drag and drop files on to the drive, then yes. Hope this helps.

 

[SC68Cal]

I do not believe there are any disadvantages to journaling the drive, so why not use some idle processor time to go ahead and journal it.

 

[yellow]

I understand the journaling feature updates the backup with any changes you make to your main HD(right?). Will this slow down my work with all that disk writing going on?

I seriously doubt you'd notice the difference.

It basically writes files system changes to a "file" in the disk's set-aside journal. This helps with data recovery should something fail. It's kind of a "failsafe" mode.

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107249

 

[superwoman]

No, journalling file systems is not to aid in searching. Think of it as a log for file system operations. It helps to maintain the integrity of the file system. For example, when your Mac loses power in the middle of a file write, those files may become "corrupt". The "journal", or log, helps the OS to roll-back the file state to the last known state, so you get less "corrupt" files.

Journalling file systems were normally used on servers, where data integrity is important. But these days, all modern OSes have them. NTFS is a journalling file system. So is Linux ext3. These are default file systems for Windows and Linux. Systems are so fast these days that the performance penalty is minimal.

You obviously don't want your backup drive to become "corrupt". So I'd say use it.

 

[combatcolin]

Whoops.



Never guess i've hardly used OS X would you?

 

[id-sign]

Thanks for the info!

Thanks!
I made 3 partitions on the drive and chose "Journaling" when doing the HD backup. Working great so far. Took under an hour to backup my HD.