nonjournaling

Nonjournaling is the absence or avoidance of a persistent journal or log in a system, process, or practice. In computing, the term is most often used to describe file systems or configurations that do not record changes in a dedicated log before applying updates. The goal is to improve performance and reduce overhead, at the expense of crash resilience and data integrity guarantees.

Nonjournaling file systems, sometimes selected for performance-critical workloads, perform updates directly to the storage medium rather than through a write-ahead or metadata journal. As a consequence, after a power loss or crash the file system may require a longer recovery or may incur data or metadata loss. Modern general-purpose systems typically use journaling by default, but some historical or specialized systems allow disabling it.

Nonjournaling can also refer to database or transactional systems configured without a write-ahead log, trading durability guarantees for speed and throughput. In practice, nonjournaling configurations are usually used in non-production environments or when data loss is deemed acceptable.

Outside computing, nonjournaling may refer to the practice of not keeping a personal diary or log. In this sense, the term describes a choice or approach to self-recording rather than a technical feature.

See also: journaling, write-ahead logging, crash recovery, file system.