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Is Mac OS extended (journaled) necessary?

2012Tony2012

2012Tony2012

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Dec 2, 2012
741
3
Running a personal iMac, is formatting my hard drive for mac os extended (journaled) necessary?

According to Apple, it's really only for servers? And Journaling is best suited for servers requiring high availability, servers containing volumes with many files, and servers containing data that is backed up at infrequent intervals....

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2355

So what do people think? Is it really needed for personal iMacs, especially if it can lead to slower performance?
 
It is necessary. It provides greater chances of data recovery in the even of corruption. There are no disadvantages to having it enabled.
 
Intell said:
It is necessary. It provides greater chances of data recovery in the even of corruption. There are no disadvantages to having it enabled.
Click to expand...

Can you point me to an Apple reference or source for that? Because the only reference and source from Apple that I found just says that journalling is to recover the last bit of data written in case of failure or electricity storm black out etc.

Where does Apple say that formatting using journaled provides greater chances of data recovery in the even of corruption?

Thanks :)
 
2012Tony2012 said:
Can you point me to an Apple reference or source for that? Because the only reference and source from Apple that I found just says that journalling is to recover the last bit of data written in case of failure or electricity storm black out etc.

Where does Apple say that formatting using journaled provides greater chances of data recovery in the even of corruption?
Click to expand...
It helps prevent data corruption in the event of a system crash or power failure. You can read more about journaling here: Journaling file system
 
When I ran Redhat 7.1 with ext2, I had to manually run fsck every single time I lost power or had a lockup requiring a hard restart. Later with ext3, I never had to worry with it. After that experience, you couldn't pay me to run an un-journaled file system.

Mind if I ask why you're worried about it?
 
Dweez said:
A journaled filesystem is "A Good Thing(tm)". Format it, use it, forget about it.
Click to expand...

LOL, I like that.. straight to the point :)

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sine-nomine said:
When I ran Redhat 7.1 with ext2, I had to manually run fsck every single time I lost power or had a lockup requiring a hard restart. Later with ext3, I never had to worry with it. After that experience, you couldn't pay me to run an un-journaled file system.

Mind if I ask why you're worried about it?
Click to expand...

I was just worried that if I format my iMac hard drive using journaled that performance would decrease, seeing I am running an 2008 iMac with only 1GB Ram. Does journaled affect my system performance and slow down the iMac? And does journaled wear and tear and decrease the life span of the hard drive seeing it's writing to it more often?

Installed a brand new Install of Snow Leopard. Did it format hard drive journaled by default? If yes I will just leave it :) But if not, how do I format the hard drive journaled and still have the brand new Snow Leopard install remain installed?
 
2012Tony2012 said:
Excellent :)

And I will format my external USB hard drive journalled as well for my SuperDuper backups. ;)
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Superb idea. I wouldn't recommend anything else, except you might consider Carbon Copy Cloner for backups, as it also clones the recovery partition, which SuperDuper! doesn't. You can use 3.5.1 ($40) or 3.4.7 (free, and works well on OS X 10.6, 10.7 and 10.8).
 
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GGJstudios said:
Superb idea. I wouldn't recommend anything else, except you might consider Carbon Copy Cloner for backups, as it also clones the recovery partition, which SuperDuper! doesn't. You can use 3.5.1 ($40) or 3.4.7 (free, and works well on OS X 10.6, 10.7 and 10.8).
Click to expand...

I didn't know CCC had a free version, thanks for telling me. :)

That's why I was using SuperDuper because it was free, but if CCC is also free, then I will use CCC as it seems to be the most popular.

Can CCC backups boot like SD backups can?
 
GGJstudios said:
Yes, CCC makes bootable backups. That's one of the primary reasons I use it.

It is. Use the 3.4.7 link I posted earlier.
Click to expand...

And why isn't the FREEWARE CCC visiably to be seen and downloaded on their website? All I see them offering is the PAID version of CCC, why?

If you didn't give me that direct link, I would never have known there was a free version.
 
2012Tony2012 said:
I didn't know CCC had a free version, thanks for telling me. :)

That's why I was using SuperDuper because it was free, but if CCC is also free, then I will use CCC as it seems to be the most popular.

Can CCC backups boot like SD backups can?
Click to expand...

When I answered your question in your other topic, I didn't realize you were running the free version of SuperDuper. CCC 3.4.7 would let you do incremental backups (it only backs up what has changed since the last backup), where the free version of SuperDuper won't - you have to register SD for that. I definitely recommend that you run something that will let you do incremental backups, as it will dramatically reduce the time to run every backup after the first one.

Either way, I would recommend that you purchase a license for one or the other - this will get you guaranteed support for CCC (they offer 'case by case' support for 3.4.7, but they are not developing it any further), or incremental backups with SuperDuper. Neither one is expensive, given that you're trusting the software to safeguard all of your data.

I generally find SuperDuper easier to set up, while CCC is more flexible. I wouldn't be concerned with CCC's ability to backup the recovery partition, since you're running Snow Leopard (which doesn't create a recovery partition - that started with Lion).
 
rnb2 said:
When I answered your question in your other topic, I didn't realize you were running the free version of SuperDuper. CCC 3.4.7 would let you do incremental backups (it only backs up what has changed since the last backup), where the free version of SuperDuper won't - you have to register SD for that. I definitely recommend that you run something that will let you do incremental backups, as it will dramatically reduce the time to run every backup after the first one.

Either way, I would recommend that you purchase a license for one or the other - this will get you guaranteed support for CCC (they offer 'case by case' support for 3.4.7, but they are not developing it any further), or incremental backups with SuperDuper. Neither one is expensive, given that you're trusting the software to safeguard all of your data.

I generally find SuperDuper easier to set up, while CCC is more flexible. I wouldn't be concerned with CCC's ability to backup the recovery partition, since you're running Snow Leopard (which doesn't create a recovery partition - that started with Lion).
Click to expand...

Interesting point, I didn't know that SuperDuper FREEWARE does a FULL backup each time and that CCC FREEWARE does incremental backups, which I agree will cut backup time a lot.

And thank you for your information regarding CCC NOT backing up the rescue partition on Snow Leopard, as I didn't know that Snow Leopard didn't create a rescue partition. Based on that information I will toss SuperDuper and go with the FREE version of CCC.

But can SuperDuper or CCC do multiple different backups so I can restore a particular backup from a particular date?
 
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The ONLY reason you would consider using a non-journaled file system on your mac would be for an external drive that you may need to have read by a really odl copy of OS X that doesn't support journaled file system format, if they even exist.


As above, use journaled, sleep easier.
 
throAU said:
The ONLY reason you would consider using a non-journaled file system on your mac would be for an external drive that you may need to have read by a really odl copy of OS X that doesn't support journaled file system format, if they even exist.


As above, use journaled, sleep easier.
Click to expand...

Ok, will do ;)
 
2012Tony2012 said:
So the link you provided, can I use that version for free forever? Or will it one day refuse me to restore hard drive and ask me to pay to do it?
Click to expand...
Yes, you can use the free version for as long as you like. Just don't update it to a newer (paid) version.
 
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