Note: "permalinks" may not be as permanent as we would like,
direct links of old sources may well be a few messages off.
Many thanks for all the advice and suggestions folks, much appreciated. As much as I would love to use ext4, after reviewing everything and weighing up the pros and cons, I think it's probably wiser to stick with the tried and tested stability of ext3. Faster fscking alone does make ext4 very tempting, but it looks like it might be a while before it's guaranteed to be as reliable as ext3. Will probably revisit this on the next upgrade in a couple of years, but as Christian pointed out, btrfs may be the way to go by then. Thanks again. Tim