[bugfix]

I had this exact experience with my workstation SSD (NTFS) after a short power loss while NPM was running. After I turned the computer back on, several files (package.json, package-lock.json and many others inside node_modules) had the correct size on disk but were filled with zeros.

I think the last time I had corrupted files after a power loss was in a FAT32 disk on Win98, but you'd usually get garbage data, not all zeros.

[dspillett]

> but you'd usually get garbage data, not all zeros.

You are less likely to get garbage with an SSD in combination with a modern filesystem because of TRIM. Even if the SSD has not (yet) wiped the data, it knows that a block that is marked as unused can be retuned as a block of 0s without needing to check what is currently stored for that block.

Traditional drives had no such facility to have blocks marked as unused from their PoV, so they always performed the read and returned what they found which was most likely junk (old data from deleted files that would make sense in another context) though could also be a block of zeros (because that block hadn't been used since the drive had a full format or someone zeroed free-space).

[wannacboatmovie]

They may be pointing to unallocated space which on a SSD running TRIM would return all zeros. NTFS is an extremely resilient yet boring filesystem, I cannot remember the last time I had to run chkdsk even after an improper shutdown.

[Sakos]

As somebody who worked as a PC technician for a while until very recently, I've run chkdsk and had to repair errors on NTFS filesystems very, very, very often. It's almost an everyday thing. Anecdotal evidence is less than useful here.

[dspillett]

So anecdotal evidence is not useful, as proven by your anecdotal evidence? :)

FWIW I've found NTFS and ext3/4 to be of similar reliability over the years, in general use and in the face of improper shutdown. Metadata journaling does a lot to preserve the filesystem in such circumstances. Most of the few significant problems I've had have been due to hardware issues, which few filesystems on their own will help you with.

It is worth noting that when you run tools like chkdsk or fsck, some of the issues reported and fixed are not data damaging, or structurally dangerous, or at least not immediately so. For instance free areas marked in such a way that makes them look used to the allocation algorithms.

[Sakos]

There's a difference between your personal experience and my experience in a professional role handling multiple customer devices every day.

However, I'm also not making a statement about NTFS's reliability vs ext3/ext4. In the years that I worked in that position, I maybe dealt with Linux systems 3 times.

Reminder of the original statement:

> NTFS is an extremely resilient yet boring filesystem, I cannot remember the last time I had to run chkdsk even after an improper shutdown.

I never said anything about catastrophic failure of an NTFS filesystem. I have experienced that, but it was comparatively rare (still happened though). I have, however, have had to run chkdsk fairly often to correct errors. Sometimes user data was affected to some degree, but it was often a matter of system stability and getting Windows back to running without issues.

I still find that NTFS is reasonably resilient and have no qualms with it. I just want to push back against the idea that nothing ever goes wrong with NTFS, which was implied by your statement that you can't remember the last time you used chkdsk.

[dspillett]

> not making a statement about NTFS's reliability vs ext3/ext4

I should have been a bit clearer there: I only mentioned those specific filesystems because those are the ones I have a lot of experience with, rather than intending to bang the drum for them (or one in favour of the other). I expect other much-tested journaled filesystems could be substituted into the same sentences.

> your original statement

GPP was not me.