I game on Debian; it is absolutely up to the task.

It is called the universal operating system for a reason.

Thx, I decided to not use raid for shipping.

this is scientific data.

Funfact, I recently did a scrub on my offline backup drive of my work PC. It correct around 250 errors. I wouldn’t have noticed any problems if I had used ext4 instead of btrfs.

I agree with both of you. Somehow I don’t worry about the drive in my laptop but 80 TB of scientific data is another thing, and I want to make sure it is the same data when it arrives.

That sounds scary and like I need at least btrfs if I need to ship the data instead of using rsync.

Yes, using rsync between the two servers would be the best option. I guess, despite I already have the drives. On my end I could provide the access and arrange proper security with VPN, but at the target there are still too many question marks and I cannot currently count on some basic Linux knowledge there.

For a previous transfer of much less data I had to write a PS script that handled the transfer. It was very slow.

So, I am actually dealing with another problem: Can I get enough information from the non-tech persons to provide the best and easiest solution for them.

Thx so far all the ideas from all of you.

Thx.

The disks are only meant for transport at this time.

The more I think about it, the more I lean towards btrfs, because even if they don’t use btrfs on the target server the copying process will do the error correction based on the checksums in btrfs itself. I hope btrfs does it the same way as ZFS in this scenario.

Your assumption is correct. These are many files of medium size: sat raster images.

The more I think about it, the more I lean towards btrfs, because even if they don’t use btrfs on the target server the copying process will do the error correction based on the checksums in btrfs itself.

I wasn’t involved in the decision process to buy those drives and enclosures. Now they act as a backup, too.

It is scientific data that needs to be available on another server.

Regarding 2: That is actually part of my job. 95% Windows, the rest is MacOS and maybe 3 to 5 Linux users (myself excluded).

I wonder what must happen to roll out more Linux in the public sector. There is still software required by scientist of various professions that need a tool only available for Windows. Installing a VM is not an option; too complicated for the average user.

And there is Windows software not compatible with Windows 11. Here is a small chance to use wine, but will the setup be practical and installable by the users themselves? I doubt it and it will put more work on the admins.

I hope at least, that Linux maintenance will be smoother despite the need for compatibility for older Windows software in the future.