XFS problems

[Synbios]

I have a Linux host running Win7 with a few problems.

The first and major problem is that my share drive is starting to get I/O errors when trying to access it. I've needed to run xfs_repair twice now. The second time it didn't work without deleting the log (-L option), in which case it gave me a warning about destroying some needed metadata, but I didn't have a choice as I couldn't mount or access my partition, or run an XFS repair otherwise. Is there some issue with having an XFS partition being the shared drive? One of my disks is /dev/sda and has root, home, etc. The /dev/sdb drive is just a secondary drive that has one partition -- /dev/sdb1 which is formatted with XFS and I access that by both the host and guest, through what I believe is a standard method. It shows up as a network/share drive in Windows.

The second problem, which is more of an annoyance is that I'm getting many $DATA$ files showing up everywhere. What are these, and can they be deleted?

I'm running openSUSE Tumbleweed with latest updates and Kernel. I'd really like some feedback on using XFS filesystem and if you have suggestions for another filesystem for this job.

[Perryg]

I/O errors are never a good sign. It can actually mean a physical drive that is going to fail. typical OS file test just does not have the umph to test the drive properly. I would use a specific test software to make sure it is sound. As for the $DATA$ files, IIRC this is a product of the XFS system but don't remember what it was for I use JFS or BTRFS myself when not using EXT4. I would treat this as an OS or hardware issue and search for the cause on line.

[Synbios]

I'm hoping it is not a hardware problem because the drive is fairly new. I was more curious for feedback regarding XFS for this task, if perhaps it was causing the drive to thrash in this situation or XFS has some incompatibilities with VBox. Is Ext4 the most common, do you recommend that?

I have BTRFS for my root drive mainly for snapshots but I don't think I need that for the data drive.

[Perryg]

I don't remember seeing anyone else complain about XFS, but then again most people here don't pay a lot of attention to the OS format. There is really only one thing that you can test as far as I know and that is the disk I/O cache setting. Try it enabled and then disabled and see if it makes a difference. You might also ask the DEVs on IRC or the DEV mailing list if they know of any issue.
https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Community

[mpack]

I'm hoping it is not a hardware problem because the drive is fairly new.

Is it a pro quality drive or consumer grade? I've had new consumer grade drives fail to work at all, so age isn't necessarily a detemining factor. Nobody seems to care about QA in consumer hard drives any more. Too much downward price pressure. Current WD is very poor. Hitachi had a good rep but they've now been bought by WD, which I suppose tells you what a good rep is worth.

[Synbios]

I don't remember seeing anyone else complain about XFS, but then again most people here don't pay a lot of attention to the OS format. There is really only one thing that you can test as far as I know and that is the disk I/O cache setting. Try it enabled and then disabled and see if it makes a difference. You might also ask the DEVs on IRC or the DEV mailing list if they know of any issue.

I will check the disk cache setting, I have a feeling it is on and turning it off may help in case there is a dirty shutdown or something.

I'm hoping it is not a hardware problem because the drive is fairly new.

Is it a pro quality drive or consumer grade? I've had new consumer grade drives fail to work at all, so age isn't necessarily a detemining factor. Nobody seems to care about QA in consumer hard drives any more. Too much downward price pressure. Current WD is very poor. Hitachi had a good rep but they've now been bought by WD, which I suppose tells you what a good rep is worth.

It's a WD Black. I know WD Green and Blue were bad but I didn't realize Black was bad too, and it appears they are not that great. I should have just gone with WD Red as I used those quite often in my NAS setups and never had a problem. Somewhat relatedly I also discovered that WD no longer honors warranties on OEM drives. So, FYI if you're buying a drive make sure you get the Retail/Boxed version for a few dollars extra since you'll get the warranty with that.