[CentOS] Filesystem choice for BackupPC extrenal drive

Fri Feb 5 00:41:40 UTC 2021
Kenneth Porter <shiva at sewingwitch.com>

I'm setting up a CentOS 7 box as a BackupPC 4 server to back up Windows 
boxes on my LAN. I'm using an external 1.5 TB USB drive for the "pool". 
BackupPC deduplicates by saving all files in a pool, a directory hiearchy 
with each file named for the checksum of the file, and the directories 
acting as a hash tree to reach each pool file. A backup for a specific 
workstation is a directory tree of checksums and metadata that point into 
the pool for the actual file data. Incremental backups are reverse deltas 
from periodic "filled" backups of all files. I'm using rsyncd to pull 
changed files from the workstations.

I'm deciding which filesystem to use for my external drive. I'm thinking 
the main candidates are ext4 and xfs. What's the best filesystem for this 
application?

<https://github.com/backuppc/backuppc>

Repo for CentOS 7 users:

<https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org/coprs/hobbes1069/BackupPC/>