Why ZFS Matters to Mac Users

I have been having a bit of an ongoing discussion with a friend over Time Machine. A lot of this has been about the problems Time Machine currently has, and where it can/should go. What little I know about ZFS has made me think it could play an important role. This kind of feeling usually tells me I need to learn more about a topic. Often it often means my initial suspicions are wrong, but so far there haven’t been any disappointments yet.

Just today, I came upon the blog post “Why ZFS Matters to Mac Users”. It feels like I’ve read this before, but it’s relevance strikes more much more, now. Currently, the most notable to me is

  • block-level checksumming to detecting errors
  • the ability to handle snapshots efficiently and quickly

Clearly, ZFS is much more than this, but with my mind on how Time Machine could be better those seem like useful thing to keep an eye out for as ZFS becomes much more prevalent in the Mac world.

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