Journaling

Journaling is a process designed to protect the file system against power outages or hardware failures, reducing the need for disk repairs. Journaling is supposed to protect the integrity of the disk, keeping it from falling into an inconsistent state by logging actions as they occur. This allows the computer to replay the information in its log and complete the action when system power is restored. Journaling is especially helpful for servers, maximizing the uptime and speeding up repairs during a system restart. A journaled disk has a continuous record of changes made to the files, providing a known safe-spot when the server reboots. Journaling dramatically speeds up the process of getting a server and file system back online since the OS can just replay the most recent actions and have the system up to date in a matter of seconds, resuming actions that were interrupted by the hardware or power failure. However, with high-bandwidth applications like audio and video production, journaling may slow down access to the data, resulting in system errors, and it may be advisable to disable journaling on audio or video drives.