-
The ext3 file system is a more advanced variant of the ext2.
-
Ext3 enables journaling, which is the most significant change between ext2 and ext3.
-
The e2fsck software must verify each ext2 file system for consistency after an unexpected power outage or system crash (also known as an unclean system shutdown). This is a time-consuming procedure, and any data on the volumes will be unavailable during that period.
-
Because of the journaling offered by the ext3 file system, a file system check after an unclean system shutdown is no longer required. The only time ext3 does a consistency check is when there is a rare hardware failure, such as a hard drive failure. The size of the file system or the number of files does not affect the time it takes to restore an ext3 file system following an unclean system shutdown. To ensure consistency, it is more dependent on the size of the journal utilised. Depending on the speed of the hardware, recovering the default journal size takes almost a second.