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I want to have an encrypted external ssd for occasional backups. It seems like consumer products don't really support linux, so unless someone has a better suggestion I'm planning to format it myself and use software encryption, using LUKS with some filesystem inside.

  1. Does this make sense?
  2. Which filesystem should I choose?
  3. Any features I should watch out for when buying the ssd?

Relevant aspects to answer these questions are mainly:

  • Stability
  • Lifetime of the device
  • Checksums like in btrfs or zfs would be nice, but aren't a hard requirement

Thanks in advance for your suggestions!

David Schubert
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1 Answers1

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Does this make sense?

Yes, it does

Which filesystem should I choose?

This depends on your needs. I use ext4 because I am used to it and also use it on my laptop's /home partition. I also do not care for non-linux interoperability (by the way if you use luks for encryption you probably do not care either).

Any features I should watch out for when buying the ssd?

This is off topic on this site and unfortunately something I can not answer. I tend to buy cheap external disks, but I also have always two active backups.

Bruni
  • 10,542
  • So if you use ext4, do you disable journaling? Some people seem to consider journaling an issue for longevity https://www.addictivetips.com/ubuntu-linux-tips/best-ssd-friendly-file-systems-on-linux/ Does anyone share the concerns raised on this site? Does it make a large difference for longevity which filesystem I use? – David Schubert Feb 02 '21 at 12:52
  • I must confess I never bothered to disable it, but probably it makes sense.Here is how it can be done: https://askubuntu.com/questions/573957/disabling-journaling-in-ubuntu-14-04 – Bruni Feb 02 '21 at 15:45