A subjective question but curious: what file system do you use?

yingwuzhao · 2009-02-24 06:09:24

I am just curious, it seems I just can't find an completely satisfied file system to use.
Even linux file system is better in handling defragmentation, but as time pass by defragments still will accumulate.
But it seems most file system simply ignore this fact, only XFS has online defragemtation, (ext4 will, but not right now).

Do you guys care about this issue?

Last edited by yingwuzhao (2009-02-24 06:09:46)

fukawi2 · 2009-02-24 06:33:07

yingwuzhao wrote:

Do you guys care about this issue?

Not really, no... While it's true that fragmentation can cause Windows to perform slowly, I can't say I've noticed it to ever have that effect on Linux.

yingwuzhao · 2009-02-24 06:39:50

does defragmentation really have no effects on linux?
Are you sure?
If so, it's a great news to me!! :D

Inxsible · 2009-02-24 06:52:03

Its been about 2 years since I installed Arch on this machine, the total defragmentation that I have seen is 5.4%(non-contiguous), on the root. My root is 7GB. so 5.4% of it is not that bad in 2 years. Also, I plan to switch my ext3 to ext4, as soon as I get over my laziness and find the Arch live CD. Once I do that and enable extents, I think I can reclaim the non-contiguous areas too (after online defrag ofcourse)

But I still use different filesystems depending on what the partition will be used for. /boot is ext2, /var is reiserfs, /home and /root were ext3 -- from now on they will be ext4 (/home already is)

I don't use XFS and JFS solely because GParted doesn't support shrinking the filesystems once they are created. and for me, I never know when I will decide that a certain partition should be bigger/smaller.

Last edited by Inxsible (2009-02-24 06:58:41)

yingwuzhao · 2009-02-24 06:58:32

I just checked my ext4 file system it has over 50% non-continuous, horrible! I don't know what is going on, check this post:
http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=66132

I prefer XFS solely because is has an excellent online defragmentation tool.

Inxsible · 2009-02-24 07:00:15

XFS is also better suited for large files like audio/video encoding and such. I do not know the exact definition of 'large' according to them, but I think ext3/4 offers a good balance.

emily · 2009-02-24 07:01:50

The way Linux file systems tend to work makes them not get hampered too much by non-contiguity. That is as a file is read, it is moved into RAM and pieced together there rather than the hard drive making multiple passes to get it in order. That said, Linux file systems would still benefit from a de-fragmentation program being run now and again, but it is not nearly as important for the upkeep of the speed of the system as it is in Windows and would not need run nearly as often as de-fragmentation tools for Windows file systems. Cheers.

On another note I use Ext4.

Last edited by emily (2009-02-24 07:08:35)

Wintervenom · 2009-02-24 07:02:40

Ext3, because Ext4 and JFS have caused me way too many problems.

Inxsible · 2009-02-24 07:05:01

Wintervenom wrote:

Ext3, because Ext4 and JFS have caused me way too many problems.

Can you elaborate on the EXT4 problems? I am using ext4 on my home and have had 0 issues. Been planning to convert my root as well, but i need to find the live cd first.

It was right here ....somewhere *goes off searching....*

Allan · 2009-02-24 07:55:47

I use ext3 with ext2 /boot because those are the filesystems I know and trust. As long as my hard drive does not get too full (say more than 85% for a 100Gb partition), I get very little fragmentation.

fwojciec · 2009-02-24 08:40:32

ext2 for boot, ext4 for system and ext3 for data partitions.

Wintervenom · 2009-02-24 08:49:36

Inxsible wrote:

Wintervenom wrote:
Ext3, because Ext4 and JFS have caused me way too many problems.
Can you elaborate on the EXT4 problems? I am using ext4 on my home and have had 0 issues. Been planning to convert my root as well, but i need to find the live cd first.
It was right here ....somewhere *goes off searching....*

Many, many times on Ext4, I've had anything parts of my home folder zeroed out out after a crash, particularly settings. Also, the file system would suddenly became read-only in the middle of normal activity or it would say there was no more space when I had over two hundred gigabytes of space remaining.

Last edited by Wintervenom (2009-02-24 08:50:10)

cerbie · 2009-02-24 08:52:28

yingwuzhao wrote:

I am just curious, it seems I just can't find an completely satisfied file system to use.
Even linux file system is better in handling defragmentation, but as time pass by defragments still will accumulate.
But it seems most file system simply ignore this fact, only XFS has online defragemtation, (ext4 will, but not right now).
Do you guys care about this issue?

Not much...but get fidefrag. It's cool. However, I run JFS wherever I can, and it likes to fragment on me. Some users have workloads that cause other FSes that seem better at preventing it (EXT3, FI) to fragment a lot, too. Even so, performance is not usually a problem.

In Windows Land, you'll have several files that you read all of often, and are not that big, in the hundreds of fragments, many of them very small. You just can't hide read latency with so many seeks. Most of the *nix FSes are made to try to spread files out, allowing a decent bit of growing without much fragmentation. Also, many are made to help keep fragmentation from running rampant when it happens. If you have a heavily fragmented file, but the fragments are in the tens of megabytes each, and near each other on the drive, then you won't even notice. On top of that, if you're reading the whole file, or a big chunk with several fragments, you will generally end up reading it in the hard drive's order, rather than the data's, so the seek times will be much less than average seek time for reading separate files. The popular FSes Linux supports, and other systems in the kernel, deal with the issue by good design, rather than just bundling a crippled version of DiskKeeper .

Just keep some free space, and give fidefrag a go if you're getting into the double-digits for non-contiguous used space. Also remember that EXT3, JFS, and XFS (RFS too, if you have a reason) did not become worse just because EXT4 got put into the main kernel. It still needs to mature. If it's not acting right for you, that's OK--just use another one that's been around for a while.

ArchArael · 2009-02-24 09:31:09

JFS on / and XFS on /home and no problems so far.

It sounds strange to me that some people have problems with these filesystems. I had several freezes and had to switch off brutally and I never had any data loss. Hope this stability will continue in future.

Gigamo · 2009-02-24 10:13:27

Ext3 anywhere here. Planning to upgrade to ext4 soon.

Had some hard drive corruption issues after crashes with JFS before, so I'll happily trade some speed for stability.

yama · 2009-02-24 11:22:24

Personally i use ext3 on my partitions. Given me no problems so far (/knock on wood). Will probably switch to ext4 but will wait since its still new and dont want to risk bumping into problems that might occur. Since it works so well (atleast so far) i dont see any reason to change it and explore with different fs.

how do you check fragmentation any way?

Last edited by yama (2009-02-24 11:24:03)

kaola_linux · 2009-02-24 13:29:36

I use these partition schemes on my desktop:
ext2 @ /boot
reiserfs @ /var
ext3 @ /home

So far, so good..:)

Meanwhile I use xfs as my / on my netbook(ssd)...I had problems with ext2 during improper reboots...:) Who cares if that breaks my SSD , at the time it breaks I can replace it already...What's important to me is the content of my system....:D

buttons · 2009-02-24 14:00:18

Ext3. Tis stable and quick enough (with dir_index, journal_data_writeback, and noatime)

No problems even after crashes.

I'll probably switch to ext4 if I manage to get bored.

Skripka · 2009-02-24 14:00:52

Wintervenom wrote:

Inxsible wrote:
Wintervenom wrote:
Ext3, because Ext4 and JFS have caused me way too many problems.
Can you elaborate on the EXT4 problems? I am using ext4 on my home and have had 0 issues. Been planning to convert my root as well, but i need to find the live cd first.
It was right here ....somewhere *goes off searching....*
Many, many times on Ext4, I've had anything parts of my home folder zeroed out out after a crash, particularly settings. Also, the file system would suddenly became read-only in the middle of normal activity or it would say there was no more space when I had over two hundred gigabytes of space remaining.

I've been running Ext4 on /home and root....I've been getting wierd random data corruptions-that I cannot explain as I cleanly mountdismount and shutdown-The extra speed I like....fortunately the only noticeable symptome were Amarok2 going buggy updating it's database-and there hasn't been any data loss.

yingwuzhao · 2009-02-24 14:15:07

For those who use XFS, do you use the tweaked "version" of it, namely use log zise=64, mount noatime, logof=8 ?
or do you simply use the default options to create and mount XFS partition?

I have been hearing XFS file system can lost date on power failures, which is my only concern for XFS, have any one experience something like this?

Thanks a lot for all you guys information, definitely helpful.

R00KIE · 2009-02-24 15:10:01

Ext3 here, I will only move to ext4 sometime from now, I don't want any serious glitch in the system I use everyday and that has important data (ok arch might break due to some update .... which so far seems really unlikely, but as long as the filesystem doesn't have problems I can get everything back).
As for fragmentation ... any fragmented filesystem will degrade performance when doing the first read of the file, it has to do with the way hard disks work (the ones with moving parts at least), from there on depends on the caching strategy of the OS.
In my case I believe I have less than 10% non contiguous on every partition and some are quite full ("important" ones like root, home and one where I have the mail files have lots of space to space though).

Edit:

Hey~~ don't cross post like that you made me think I did post this on the wrong thread

Last edited by R00KIE (2009-02-24 15:12:49)

fukawi2 · 2009-02-24 21:43:45

Inxsible wrote:

XFS is also better suited for large files like audio/video encoding and such.

I normally use JFS, but for my MediaDump on my HTPC I used XFS since at the very least the files on there are MP3's 2-3mb+, or videos 300-800mb. Seems tobe going pretty well.

yingwuzhao wrote:

For those who use XFS, do you use the tweaked "version" of it, namely use log zise=64, mount noatime, logof=8 ?
or do you simply use the default options to create and mount XFS partition?
I have been hearing XFS file system can lost date on power failures, which is my only concern for XFS, have any one experience something like this?

For my MediaDump, I just used the defaults. My HTPC isn't on any kind of UPS, and the power has been pretty flaky here over the last few weeks with the bushfires around. No problem so far

Ranguvar · 2009-02-24 22:47:53

My new setup will be a 200MB-ish /boot under ext2 (journal-less ext4 soon), some-size LVM partition (maybe 100GB or so) with 8GB swap and LUKS-encrypted root for any installed Linux/*BSD/etc. - this using tuned ext4 without barriers, and with writeback, relatime, commit=30, nobh, etc. - and the rest as a TrueCrypt partition for my data running ext4 (not as aggressively tuned) with ext3 compatibility (for Windoze compatibility). I'll be manually backing up the TrueCrypt partition to another drive, maybe external, soon. I also have another drive I'll install Windoze 7 and (ONLY for testing) Hackintosh on, with the obvious filesystems.

userlander · 2009-02-24 23:26:51

Ext3 for critical and root partitions, XFS for media and (non-OS) data partitions. So far I've just used default options for XFS, and it seems to be fine so far. And that computer HAS crashed twice from a power failure. Ext3 was really corrupted, but I had no loss of data on XFS. I don't think it was being written to or anything at the time, though.

Arch Linux

#1 2009-02-24 06:09:24

A subjective question but curious: what file system do you use?

#2 2009-02-24 06:33:07

Re: A subjective question but curious: what file system do you use?

#3 2009-02-24 06:39:50

Re: A subjective question but curious: what file system do you use?

#4 2009-02-24 06:52:03

Re: A subjective question but curious: what file system do you use?

#5 2009-02-24 06:58:32

Re: A subjective question but curious: what file system do you use?

#6 2009-02-24 07:00:15

Re: A subjective question but curious: what file system do you use?

#7 2009-02-24 07:01:50

Re: A subjective question but curious: what file system do you use?

#8 2009-02-24 07:02:40

Re: A subjective question but curious: what file system do you use?

#9 2009-02-24 07:05:01

Re: A subjective question but curious: what file system do you use?

#10 2009-02-24 07:55:47

Re: A subjective question but curious: what file system do you use?

#11 2009-02-24 08:40:32

Re: A subjective question but curious: what file system do you use?

#12 2009-02-24 08:49:36

Re: A subjective question but curious: what file system do you use?

#13 2009-02-24 08:52:28

Re: A subjective question but curious: what file system do you use?

#14 2009-02-24 09:31:09

Re: A subjective question but curious: what file system do you use?

#15 2009-02-24 10:13:27

Re: A subjective question but curious: what file system do you use?

#16 2009-02-24 11:22:24

Re: A subjective question but curious: what file system do you use?

#17 2009-02-24 13:29:36

Re: A subjective question but curious: what file system do you use?

#18 2009-02-24 14:00:18

Re: A subjective question but curious: what file system do you use?

#19 2009-02-24 14:00:52

Re: A subjective question but curious: what file system do you use?

#20 2009-02-24 14:15:07

Re: A subjective question but curious: what file system do you use?

#21 2009-02-24 15:10:01

Re: A subjective question but curious: what file system do you use?

#22 2009-02-24 21:43:45

Re: A subjective question but curious: what file system do you use?

#23 2009-02-24 22:47:53

Re: A subjective question but curious: what file system do you use?

#24 2009-02-24 23:26:51

Re: A subjective question but curious: what file system do you use?

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