OT: what's the best non-ZFS file system for NAS device?

[Rob Lewis]

Sorry to go OT but I figured the file system experts here would have valuable advice. 

My iomega ix2-200 NAS is based on some flavor of embedded Linux. It has a USB port for attaching extra disk drive(s). The manual says they should be in FAT, FAT32 or NTFS format, though a HFS+ drive seems to be recognized and reportedly ext3 and ext4 are, too. 

Which would be the best format to choose for data integrity and reliability (sadly, I don't think ZFS is an option)? 

Thanks for any suggestions. 

[Boyd Waters]

You have a box with embedded Linux. Presumably you don't have total
control over this system, can't add new filesystems or otherwise
install system software, or you don't want to mess around with
possibly "bricking" the device by playing with its firmware.

I'd choose NTFS for my own data in such a situation. And I wouldn't trust it.

I have played with NTFS since Windows NT 3.1, and it is designed to be
a reliable, fault-tolerant filesystem.

Although ext4 has support for integrity checksums, your Linux could be
mounting ext4 as an ext3 system or otherwise not requiring on-disk
integrity features.

I would be concerned that an NTFS on Linux, while attempting to be
reliable, would be a memory hog and thus possibly compromise the
actual integrity of the rest of the NAS.

Of course, the same could be said of ZFS on non-enterprise hardware…
Alas, I have a lot of experience with failure on ZFS and I've come to
trust it. I don't have as much experience with NTFS on Linux.

So there's my non-answer. Don't trust anything. Keep offline backups.

Be careful out there!