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Comment by ratboy666 | Hacker News Reader

They did mention ZFS, so verified hashes of each file block. I hope they are scrubbing, and have at least one snapshot.

ZFS does nothing to protect you against RAM corrupting your data before ZFS sees it. All you'll end up with is a valid checksum of the now bad data.

You can Google more, but, I'll just leave this from the first page of the openZFS manual:

  Misinformation has been circulated that ZFS data integrity features are somehow worse than those of other filesystems when ECC RAM is not used. This is not the case: all software needs ECC RAM for reliable operation and ZFS is no different from any other filesystem in that regard.[1]

[1] https://openzfs.readthedocs.io/en/latest/introduction.html

Why would one snapshot help?

One snapshot would help because, if EVERYTHING collapses, and you need data recovery, the snapshot provides a basepoint for the recovery. This should allow better recovery of metadata. Not that this should EVER happen -- it is just a good idea. I use Jim Salter's syncoid/sanoid to make snapshots, age them out, and send data to another pool.

I agree that ECC is a damn good idea - I use it on my home server. But, my lappy (i5 thinkpad) doesn't have it.

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