I need this broken down in English

You know how the ext2 filesystem can and will most likely loose data if it is unmounted improperly (i.e. power failure, just pressing the power button without shutting down, etc.)? That is because all data to be written to disk is first cached in memory, then at a more apprapriate time (when the cache is full, or when there is a low system load) the data is written to disk. Journaling is a way of storing that info without much of a speed loss, so when a drive is unmounted uncleanly, not all is lost. Also ReiserFS uses something called a B+ Tree to store data. It sounds complicated, but as with anything involved with computers if you take the time to do the research you'll understand it... I'll leave this one up to you. There is also journaling info all over the web.. just use your noggin'.