07-31-2019, 10:26 AM
It's difficult to argue the use cases for either file system with the characteristics of the PineBook Pro laptop.
These file systems are meant for scenarios where there is redundancy in the form of multiple drives.
Trying to apply ZFS or Btrfs to eMMC alone may be worse than not using either system - it could be all working fine one moment but corruption in the wrong place means total loss of everything and no way to fix it at all - in similar situations, other file systems could recover.
Adding a single NVMe to the mix improves matters a little but only a little and it's still far from ideal. Obviously, you could hold two copies for a pool on the NVMe drive, for half the effective storage capacity with every block stored twice in the pool. But when the drive fails everything will be lost.
Much better to implement these file systems on a separate computer with multiple drives and take regular backups from the PineBook Pro to this computer. And run a lightweight file system on the PineBook Pro that can recover from errors. This is a much safer scenario.
These file systems are meant for scenarios where there is redundancy in the form of multiple drives.
Trying to apply ZFS or Btrfs to eMMC alone may be worse than not using either system - it could be all working fine one moment but corruption in the wrong place means total loss of everything and no way to fix it at all - in similar situations, other file systems could recover.
Adding a single NVMe to the mix improves matters a little but only a little and it's still far from ideal. Obviously, you could hold two copies for a pool on the NVMe drive, for half the effective storage capacity with every block stored twice in the pool. But when the drive fails everything will be lost.
Much better to implement these file systems on a separate computer with multiple drives and take regular backups from the PineBook Pro to this computer. And run a lightweight file system on the PineBook Pro that can recover from errors. This is a much safer scenario.