[CentOS] Preventing hour-long fsck on ext3-filesystem

Hi!

I'm justing in the process of setting up a new fileserver for our
company. I'm installing CentOS 5.3 (64 bit) on it.

One of the "problems" with it is that it has a 3.5TB filesystem for
the user data which I formatted during setup as an ext3. Now my
experience with our current fileserver is that a 0.5TB ext3 filesystem
needs approx half an hour to complete (and kicks in every so and so
reboots or every 180days). My estimate is that for the larger
filesystem (and the faster machine) the fsck would need well over an
hour (being optimistic). I dread the day when I have to reboot the
server and wait for 2hours or more just because the system thought it
would be a prudent thing to check the filesystem.

My question:

 - is there another stable filesystem (XFS, ReiserFS ...) in the
   centosplus-kernel where this could be avoided (fsck is faster) and
   that is as safe as ext3
 - Or would it be better to switch off automatic checking with tune2fs

Any opinion/experience welcome. I looked around a bit but couldn't
find a good answer

Bernhard

PS: Sorry for the stupid question, but I'm only part-time admin and
testing this myself would take weeks, I guess

-- 
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DI Bernhard F.W. Gschaider
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EMail: 	Bernhard.Gschaider at ice-sf.at
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