So this non ECC memory usage.

[jgreco]

But it is the same with other file systems.

Other filesystems don't manage hundreds of terabytes or, worse, petabytes of data.

Other filesystems have fsck or chkdsk.

OK. “Authority” in this case doesn’t get much better than Matthew Ahrens, one of the cofounders of ZFS at Sun Microsystems and current ZFS developer at Delphix. In the comments to one of my filesystem articles on Ars Technica, Matthew said “There’s nothing special about ZFS that requires/encourages the use of ECC RAM more so than any other filesystem.”

A carefully worded statement to be certain. It's certainly true that ZFS doesn't require the use of ECC RAM, and the qualification of "any more so than any other filesystem" is true as well. ZFS will probably not drown puppies or zombify the neighbors any more than NTFS or FFS will, and the likelihood that your filesystem ends up damaged is certainly quite similar to those other filesystems as well. However, unlike other filesystems, most people deploy ZFS to protect their data to a higher degree of care than NTFS or FFS, and a lack of ECC reduces the ability of the system to correctly detect and correct errors, especially errors that happen in the ARC, which is often cached for long periods of time. This is a significant difference to other filesystems, in my opinion, at least.

In any case, this has been argued back and forth pointlessly dozens or hundreds of times. It is a nonproductive discussion, and so I refer you to the search function to find any of the other equally pointless threads on this topic. If you want to use ECC, go ahead. If you prefer to believe you can get away without it, go ahead, but I encourage you to disable your airbags in your car.

Please consider this thread closed.