[microchip8]

That's very strange that suse doesn't set a check interval. IIRC, check interval is not controlled by suse itself but by mkfs.ext3 which automatically sets it for 2 months and I don't think suse disables this as it will be very stupid to do so. Are you sure you have created your partition with SUSE? Because if you have, the check interval will always be set as I've never experienced partitions created by SUSE to not have a check interval.

Yes, there are differences between journaling NTFS and Ext3. The check interval in Ext3 is there to ensure proper filesystem consistency. In case there's a kernel bug, a bad disk cable or something else which can *silently* corrupt the filesystem, the check interval ensures consistency after ext3 runs a check. IIRC, NTFS does not have such a feature (auto check interval) and only replays its journal after a power failure / unclean shutdown, but this alone will not catch possible kernel bugs/cable problems which may corrupt the filesystem. Checks are *not* meant to be interrupted as it can bring problems. I, for one, have completely disabled check intervals on my ext3 partitions and never had any problems in doing so. Ext3 has a robust enough journaling technology (though not perfect)

Further, NTFS uses meta-data only logical journaling whereas Ext3 uses ordered meta-data physical journaling which can be much more robust in specific cases (but also slower, mostly due to the physical journaling which overwrites a whole block instead of only commiting the changes to that block as done by logical journaling). However, latest version of NTFS has added transactional atomic support which ensures that in specific cases, if a transaction does not finish due to interruption like a power failure, it won't show up on next boot (rollback). If a transaction finishes (success) and then a power failure occurs, it most certainly will show up on next boot