FSCK Backup Drive? Cutting down FSCK wait.

[neutro]

Do you think it is good idea to cut down fsck time by disabling fsck on backup drive?
LABEL=/backup /backup ext3 defaults 1 2
to
LABEL=/backup /backup ext3 defaults 1 0

In order to minimize downtime during maintenance and updates? I am running hardware raid 1 for my system, and fsck took long time for backup due to the size and files. Shall i depend on smartcheck to determine the health of /backup (sdb)?

[cPanelJerrySmith]

If I am not mistaken, fsck should only run every X mounts (i think it is 40 by default?) or when an unclean shutdown has been detected.

In either case, it should only occur on rare occasions. I would not recommend disabling fsck on any filesystem.

[alphawolf50]

You could also convert your backup partition to ext4, which would reduce FSCK time significantly. CentOS/RHEL 5.6 and later support ext4.

Note that in RHEL and clones, the utilities have slightly different names than most instructions will give you. Wherever you see a "2fs" in a command, it is "4fs" under RHEL.

i.e.
# yum install e4fsprogs
# tune4fs -O extents,uninit_bg,dir_index /dev/DEV
# e4fsck -fDC0 /dev/DEV

Replace "DEV" with your device, and make sure you umount /backup before doing any of this.

Oh, and don't forget to change the mount option to ext4 in fstab.

[tdens]

I would, and do, disable fsck on any large drives and manually schedule fscking. Changing fstab entries will not disable fsck, though - you'll need to use tune2fs. No sane backup scenario would be done to a partition or disk in the same physical box that the data lives in, unless this is "just for fun" data.