Ext4 data loss

I, too, have experienced data losses in ext4 partitions.

There was some problem with my X that hangs the system about once a week (I was upgrading my X system and drivers too aggressively) so sometimes I had to hard reboot my computer (even magic SysRq does not respond in such cases). I lost most or all of my KDE settings after the reboots, and for one time also all my Thunderbird settings. This never happened until I migrated to ext4..

So I converted all my ext4′s back to ext3 and downgraded the kernel to 2.6.27 which is considered by Gentoo as stable. Loss of KDE settings is no big deal, but I really don’t want to have a kernel bug erase my codes, or homework that is due tomorrow, or diary I’ve kept for eight years.

Anyway, the performance of ext4 is really good..

References – Other recent reports of ext4 data losses:
[1] https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/317781/comments/45
[2] http://www.h-online.com/open/Ext4-data-loss-explanations-and-workarounds–/news/112892
[3] http://www.h-online.com/open/Possible-data-loss-in-Ext4–/news/112821
[4] http://cookinglinux.cn/ext4-lose-data.html (Chinese)

Related posts:

1. Migrating to EXT4

Tags: ext4, fs, Linux