Filesystem corrupts after power failure

I've seen several linux boxes get their file system corrupted after a sudden power failure. Usually the partitions and the data is still there, but for whatever reason it won't mount and boot correctly and I've had to end up rebuilding the box from scratch which is a pain in the arse as they aren't always on site.

I'm not a linux expert, but it seems that sometimes the GRUB gets stuffed, or the partitions lose their labels or whatever so they won't mount properly.

Linux seems to handle power failures far more poorly than Win 2K /XP as I've know very few Windows boxes corrupt this much after a power failure.

I've tried using the sync option in fstab but it slows the box down too much (a simple file copy goes from 7sec to 1min23sec).

We tend to use software raid if that has issues with power failures?

At the moment we're using ext3, is there a more reliable filesystem that will handle power failures better?

Would using "sync" for the /boot and / partitions stop it from corrupting the tables?

These aren't massive enterprise systems, they're mainly firewalls and small mail servers, so is ReiserFS or any of the others better?

Any advice is appreciated,

Cheers
Mark

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