Choosing The Best Linux Filesystem For Your PC

[piratesmack]

I've never had enough fragmentation to where I noticed a decrease in performance (I've also never kept an install for more than 6 months ), but if I did I'd simply tar up my system, reformat my partitions, and copy the files back.

I'm using Ext4, btw.

[Txnca]

Most modern filesystems will fragment sure, but with the speed of modern HDD, you're not going to notice much, if any degradation in system performance. After all, the reason for performance issues in my systems has to do with not having enough RAM, therefore requiring the use of a swap file. If you really want to improve system performance, add RAM. Doesn't matter what OS or file system you are using.

Steve

[eiver]

My experience is quite the opposite. With 4 GB of RAM I have, I never came even close to running out of RAM. I am definitely HDD limited and this really shows when I boot the system and when I want to copy an 8 GB file (which I do quite often). When I open my PC I can really hear all the hard work being done by HDD heads.

[Txnca]

My experience is quite the opposite. With 4 GB of RAM I have, I never came even close to running out of RAM. I am definitely HDD limited and this really shows when I boot the system and when I want to copy an 8 GB file (which I do quite often). When I open my PC I can really hear all the hard work being done by HDD heads.

Of course you are going to notice a slow down when copying an 8GB file. When I move movies from one drive to another it takes 15 to 20 minutes to move 8GB of files over. That's using SATA2 drives. Of course I am doing other stuff while it is moving the files, but even if I walk away from the system it doesn't change the time it takes much.

When you are copying/moving large files then it isn't an issue of RAM or fragmentation, it's the bottle-neck of your system bus and the speed at which is is running.

When I had to slow my memory speed down from 1066MHz, to 800MHz, I could tell a BIG difference. That is an issue with Vista. In XP I can set my RAM speed at 1066MHz, but not in Vista x64, even though I gained 32bits of data path it still slowed my system down enough for me to notice the difference. For me to gain that system speed back I have to OC my processor, which I won't do with the stock heatsink/fan I have on there now. Heck, I'm already having heat issues, this in a system with 4 case fans, not counting the two on the PSU.

Steve

[ibm450]

When you are copying/moving large files then it isn't an issue of RAM or fragmentation, it's the bottle-neck of your system bus and the speed at which is is running.

you have hit the nail on the head....but in saying that, why dose xp run so much quicker then Ubuntu? could we confidently say its got to do with the windows closed propriety drivers (graphics - chipset drivers) compared to open source code?

[Txnca]

When you are copying/moving large files then it isn't an issue of RAM or fragmentation, it's the bottle-neck of your system bus and the speed at which is is running.

you have hit the nail on the head....but in saying that, why dose xp run so much quicker then Ubuntu? could we confidently say its got to do with the windows closed propriety drivers (graphics - chipset drivers) compared to open source code?

Actually no, it has to do with the clock speed of the bus system. It really has nothing to do with the drivers. From what I have seen, the Ubuntu drivers are just as fast as the Intel drivers that I use when I use Windows. The difference I saw had to do with the speed at which I could run the RAM. I have 1066MHz DRAM in my system that in XP I was able to run at that speed. In Vista I was unable to run them at that speed which has to do with the instability of Vista. I have thus far, not tried to run my DRAM at it's native speed in Mint. Mainly because I am multi-booting XP, Vistax64 and Mint.

Steve

[deleted]

For managing large files (movies/virtual machines) it's hard to beat jfs. I can delete an 80 gig VM in a few (less than 10) seconds.
-Hinto

[Midnighter]

Each FS has it's advantages, depending on what your are doing with it, and if most of the files are large or small. There is no on "best", it's all about you, your habits, and what the machine in question is to be used primarily for.

[deleted]

Yep...
Most of my filesystems are either ext3/etx4, but my vms are on jfs.
-Hinto

[naramell]

Hi folks,

first post here hope I can tell you something useful then. I'm with Mint since Helena and installed it many times since I'd to reinstall Win for working reasons again. First I went Ext4 which worked very well - no probs ever - the casual filecheck passed flying. Ext3 was a similar experience, only the file checks were VERY slow... next install jfs: problems from beginning on: messages like "could not mount... unknown file system.." very anoying, I couldn't boot and when I got it working I never managed to get the /home partition mounted and finally I lost GBs of data. Bad choice (at least from MY! point of use). Next try XFS: best choice ever: worked without any problems from beginning on, VERY fast, expecially if large files are involved (e.g. any movie files)... the only backdraw might be if you have to recover the system. The DVD-distro might not have xfs recovery tools (not very common but could be possible - but all I'd tried had them)...

Result: 1st definitely XFS: fast, fast, fast and very stable - never had any problems. Note: 10
2nd close is Ext4: worked very well and got it's job done excellent. Larger files were handled much faster by XFS, though. Note:9+

PS: Ah yeah, and please forgive me my bad (dunno) english, it's not my mother language

[eiver]

I wonder how Linux file systems work with SSD. Smaller file fragmentation might be a drawback in this case. On the SSD the bigger fragmentation you have, the better, because it speeds up parallel reads/writes or so I've heard. (Correct me if I'm wrong).

[marcus0263]

I wonder how Linux file systems work with SSD. Smaller file fragmentation might be a drawback in this case. On the SSD the bigger fragmentation you have, the better, because it speeds up parallel reads/writes or so I've heard. (Correct me if I'm wrong).

I'm running SSD's on my Netbook and also on my main desktop. All I can say is that it FLY'S! Hell my main desktop booting not only is almost instant but applications are "just there" when you click them. My main desktop I have the OS installed on the drive and for data storage I use a home NAS and mount with NFS.

Anyway here's the recommendations for using Linux on an SSD, slice up your drives accordingly -

/boot
/
/tmp
/var/log
/home
swap

So boot, tmp and log I turn off journaling, no need to journal those file systems. To do this create them as ext4 then to turn off journaling -

Code: Select all

tune2fs -O ^has_journal /dev/sda1

(adjust sda1 to match your slices accordingly)

Then in fstab for the "non journal" slices

Code: Select all

/boot		ext4	noatime,discard     0 1
/tmp		ext4	noatime,barrier=0,nobh,commit=100,nouser_xattr,discard    0 1
/ var/log	ext4	noatime,barrier=0,nobh,commit=100,nouser_xattr,discard   0 1

Now for slices that have journaling

Code: Select all

/		ext4	relatime,errors=remount-ro,discard       0 1
/home	ext4	relatime,barrier=0,data=writeback,nobh,commit=100,nouser_xattr,discard   0 2 

Root takes issue with to much tweaking, so I keep it basic with just adding relatime and discard. If you're on Mint 10 with the newer kernel it has support for automatic trim support, that's what the "discard" option is for.

My file systems fly with this, boot, log and tmp you don't need journaling so turn it off to conserve the life of the SSD plus it increases the speed.