Here's a question I've had for awhile and now that I'm starting to understand Linux better I need this question answered

What is the difference between the ext2 and ext3 filesystems and what are the pros and cons of each. I use ext2 on my laptop because ext3 never works but I'm using ext3 for my desktop and I really don't see much difference.

I'm trying to pull out of the realm of and need to know this to move on to the next level

Ext2 is the age old file system for Linux.

It is somewhat primitive a lot like fat32 is. It' has been supassed by many filesystems.

Nowadays filesystems are more robust because they are journaling filesystem. Like NTFS on NT/2000 and XP.

In Linux you can find ReiserFS, XFS, ext3 and many others.

ext3 is a largely adopted format now because it is based on ext2 but it uses journaling to protect file integrity. Journaling is the process of cataloguing and noting in a journal every file operation before they are started and keeping info to restore everything to original in case of an accident, power failure, disk damage, etc...

But being a cousin of ext2 it is backward compatible with ext2.

So in everyday to day usage you won't see much of a diffrerence, but one thing is certain with ext3 your files don't get corrupted, the system crashes a lot less and data is not damge by thingsl ike a hard reset for example.

In short it makes for a much stable operating system. ext2, much like fat32 as a tendencie to get corrupted or damaged easily and lose data.

Well I've lost 3 partitions and 10 gigs of .Ogg files using ext3 and/or reiserFS
OF course I did have backups.........but it's still painfull
I've never lost anything using ext2.............
take it for what it's worth............

Folks, does anyone know some good (brief but informationfull) document about linux filesystems?
Cause I understand a bit differences in Ext2 and Ext3, but i do not know anything about reiserFS...
Or is there some nice answer awaiting me in LQ? ;-))

Losing data could be caused by many factors and I have lost data on many filesystems.

I use ext3 and never lost anything vital. The point is journaling filesystems are more reliable.

Otherwise as you say we would not need to backup.

great stuff, thanks!