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ylyntoday at 6:39 AM2 repliesview on HN

You assert that ECC RAM being necessary for ZFS is just a myth but provide no justification for why that is untrue.

Is it not the case that if you don't have ECC memory, ZFS could end up writing a checksum that does not match the data if you get a bitflip in just the right (wrong) spot?


Replies

Confikstoday at 6:52 AM

Yes, indeed. ECC RAM is better than non-ECC RAM, also for ZFS.

The myth, popularized by a notorious thread on the TrueNAS forums [1], is specifically that ZFS requires ECC RAM, and will do worse than other filesystems without it, because scrubbing will multiply a single bitflip into a failed pool.

A ZFS core developer says that that isn't the case [2]. Here's some more reasoning [3], also about many other myths.

[1] https://www.truenas.com/community/threads/ecc-vs-non-ecc-ram...

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18480016

[3] https://kldload.com/zfs-wiki/myths

show 3 replies
naturalmovementtoday at 6:51 AM

> You assert that ECC RAM being necessary for ZFS is just a myth but provide no justification for why that is untrue.

ZFS without ECC is no more risky than any other file system / software RAID without ECC.

As no one owes you an explanation, it would take you five seconds to Google this and discover:

1. It's been disproven, with one of the original ZFS developers chiming in.

2. The original source of the rumor was a forum post that somehow became canon.