What does “journaled” on a hard disc means?

[Curtis Thompson]

hello…

https://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.4/en/mh2030.html

“A Mac OS Extended volume can be journaled, which means that the operating system keeps a continuous log (journal) of the changes made to the files on the volume. This helps the operating system restore the volume to a usable state when a power failure or other problem interrupts the disk’s operation and damages files.”

sitruc

[Mark Sloan]

Just to be clear, this won’t save you from a hard disk going bad or anything, but it does help keep your system file system running more smoothly than before. With OS 10.3 and on, the performance hit is much smaller at about 2-5%. You can turn it on in 10.2.8 I think, but you have to use the terminal and the performance hit was something like 10-15% if I remember correctly.

[Rainer Wirth]

Thank you very much. So it makes sense to format your harddisc containing the system journaled.

Rainer

[Mark Sloan]

“So it makes sense to format your harddisc containing the system journaled.”
Exactly. Your media drives, if you erase them after each project and reformat shouldn’t be journaled. But if you have multiple projects that have long work schedules, you might want to sacrifice a little speed for file structure. Again, this is not enough though, back up your files!