{"id":283353,"date":"2026-06-28T15:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-06-28T19:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/06\/28\/this-linux-storage-feature-feels-like-cheating-once-you-understand-it\/"},"modified":"2026-06-28T15:30:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-28T19:30:09","slug":"this-linux-storage-feature-feels-like-cheating-once-you-understand-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/06\/28\/this-linux-storage-feature-feels-like-cheating-once-you-understand-it\/","title":{"rendered":"This Linux storage feature feels like cheating once you understand it"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.howtogeek.com\/the-linux-storage-feature-that-feels-like-cheating-once-you-understand-it\/\">This Linux storage feature feels like cheating once you understand it<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.howtogeek.com\/the-linux-storage-feature-that-feels-like-cheating-once-you-understand-it\/\">https:\/\/www.howtogeek.com\/the-linux-storage-feature-that-feels-like-cheating-once-you-understand-it\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Publish Date: <a href=\"publish_date]\">2026-06-28 15:00:00<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Source Domain: <a href=\"www.howtogeek.com\">www.howtogeek.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Storage is one of those parts of Linux that most people only think about when something breaks. You pick a file system during install, trust it with your files, and then forget it exists. It sits under everything: your OS, your home folder, your logs, your downloads, your work, and all the small mistakes you make while changing things. For years, that mostly means one thing: when a file changes, the old data is overwritten by the new data, and you move on.<\/p>\n<p>Copy-on-write (CoW) changes that bargain in a way that almost feels like cheating. Instead of rushing to overwrite old blocks, a CoW file system writes the changed data somewhere else and then updates its map. That simple shift is what makes snapshots, cheap clones, rollbacks, and smarter backups possible.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"cow-changes-the-rule-you-thought-was-fixed\">\n                        CoW changes the rule you thought was fixed<br \/>\n               <\/h2>\n<h3 id=\"new-writes-leave-old-blocks-alone\">\n            New writes leave old blocks alone<br \/>\n    <\/h3>\n<p>On a plain file system, changing a file often means changing the old blocks in place. On a CoW file system, the old blocks are left alone, and the changed data is written to new blocks. Only after that does the file system update its pointers.<\/p>\n<p>This means the file system can keep an old view of the data without making a full second copy at the start. That one idea sits behind most of the features that make CoW feel unfair the first time it saves you. A snapshot can hold the old state. A cloned file can share blocks with the first file. A backup stream can send only what changed after an earlier snapshot.<\/p>\n<p>       &#8230;<br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.howtogeek.com\/the-linux-storage-feature-that-feels-like-cheating-once-you-understand-it\/\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This Linux storage feature feels like cheating once you understand it https:\/\/www.howtogeek.com\/the-linux-storage-feature-that-feels-like-cheating-once-you-understand-it\/ Publish Date: 2026-06-28&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":283354,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/static0.howtogeekimages.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/wm\/2025\/06\/linux-mascot-wearing-sunglasses-and-using-a-laptop-surrounded-by-floating-windows-with-the-i3-window-manager-logo-in-the-background.png?w=1600&h=900&fit=crop","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[71],"class_list":["post-283353","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-linux","tag-linux"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283353"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=283353"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283353\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":283355,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283353\/revisions\/283355"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/283354"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=283353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=283353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=283353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}