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karabaja4

Member

From: Croatia

Registered: 2008-09-14

Posts: 1,001

Website

Filesystems - ext4 vs XFS on multimedia HDDs

Hi,

I was wondering how does XFS perform in the long run compared to ext4 on strictly multimedia storage hard drivers - where no file is less than 500mb.

I read some benchmarks, and all these tests show XFS in various situations - but I am unable to determine how would this reflect on usage in practice - e.g. one of most important things for me is copying <from> and <to> the hard drive.

I ran some quick benchmarks on my own:

Copying 232.6mb:

XFS - 70mb/s write, 45mb/s read
EXT4 - 69mb/s write, 48mb/s read
JFS - 60mb/s write (little behind), 50mb/s read

So, my question is, is it worth it to run all my multimedia storage partitions on XFS or should I just stick to ext4 since it seems just as fast (at least by my estimate), and is relatively newer and more maintained?

litemotiv

Forum Fellow

Registered: 2008-08-01

Posts: 5,026

Re: Filesystems - ext4 vs XFS on multimedia HDDs

If you consistently work with large files (create-move-delete), then XFS is overall very fast, usually a tad faster than Ext3/4. I don't think it is worth the trouble reformatting existing Ext partitions though, more of a consideration when creating new ones for typical large-file operations.

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graysky

Wiki Maintainer

From: :wq

Registered: 2008-12-01

Posts: 10,605

Website

Re: Filesystems - ext4 vs XFS on multimedia HDDs

I've used xfs for years for video captured mpeg-2 streams (3-8 gigs each).  It is wicked fast.  What I don't like about it is the lack of fsck support; you need to use another set of utils to check/repair it.

See my posts over the km forums:
XFS maintenance - read if you're new to XFS
XFS Speed Hints-Measure % frag and defrag your XFS partition

That said, those posts are over 2-1/2 years old before ext4 and on old hardware.  EXT4 looks fine from your own data; I wouldn't mess with xfs now.

Last edited by graysky (2010-12-25 15:49:24)

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karabaja4

Member

From: Croatia

Registered: 2008-09-14

Posts: 1,001

Website

Re: Filesystems - ext4 vs XFS on multimedia HDDs

If someone's interested... I tested XFS and ext4 on fastest hard drive I currently have, and tweaked the mount settings on both filesystems. The both partitions are on the same hard drive as shown:

/dev/sda2     ext4     40G   24G   14G  64% /home
/dev/sda4      xfs    172G  733M  172G   1% /media/ST3250410AS

The fstab tweaks are noatime,nobarrier for both, and logbufs=8 for XFS:

/dev/sda2 /home ext4 defaults,noatime,nobarrier 0 1
/dev/sda4 /media/ST3250410AS xfs defaults,noatime,nobarrier,logbufs=8 0 0

At these settings write speed is (copied FROM the same hard drive to sda2/sda4):

ext4 - 70.77mb/s
XFS - 96.92mb/s

Read speed is (copied TO the same hard drive from sda2/sda4):

ext4 - 73.72mb/s
XFS - 83.43mb/s

So in terms of pure read/write speed, XFS still wins when tweaked...

Last edited by karabaja4 (2010-12-27 21:11:57)