Topic: Question regarding "running e2fsck is recommended" on USB disks

[lloydh]

I use SME8b6 in Server and Gateway mode as my home server for firewall and data storage, it has 500GB of storage and I back up to a 2TB USB disk.

I formatted the USB disk following the instructions in USB Disks and it set the drive to a mount count of 30 as default.        I then added the following to fstab.

/dev/sdc1               /media/WD003            ext3    pamconsole,exec,noauto,managed 0 0

Every 30 mounts I now get the following in Messages.

EXT3-fs warning: maximal mount count reached, running e2fsck is recommended

I run e2fsck in the unattended mode from the console but it takes 17 hours, is this really necessary every 30 mounts (25 to 30 days) or is there a shorter way of doing this.    I use e2fsck -cfpvtt /dev/sdc1.

After doing a number of searches I believe I have the following 3 options.

1) Add a cron job to run e2fsck every month.

2) Use tune2fs to increase the count on the drive.

3) Change field 6 in fstab from 0 to 2 so the disk is checked at boot but I don't know if this will be enough to prevent the "running e2fsck is recommended" message.

Does anybody have any views on this.

Thanks, Lloyd.

[Mntsnow]

Bump as this would be great info to know...