This is one of the top linux interview questions asked in the linux interview. It can be answered in the following manner. Ext3 file system is an upgraded version of ext2 and it also supports journaling. When an unclean shutdown is performed ext2 file system performs a check on the machine for errors which is a long process but it is not so in case of the ext3 file system.
In case of a hardware failure, an ext3 consistency check will occur without any pause. The time of the recovery of the file system is independent of the number of files. The time is dependent on the size of the journal which only takes a second which depends on the speed of the hardware.
