what about these file systems: ext4, reiserfs, and jfs?

waytin · 2009-02-10 15:21:39

I use ext3 as my file system now.

It said that these three file systems are better than ext3.
Ext4 is a successor to ext3. I think it must be better.
Reiserfs is very fast.
And jfs is effective(low usage of CPU).

Could anyone talk about the experiences of using these FSs?

kjon · 2009-02-10 15:29:47

Mhhh... That depends, every user has different expectatives and requirements for his machine(s), so you'll get different responses here.
For instance **I don't like ext3** because no. I always find it quite slow. Don't know why and don't want to investigate. I'm too lazy.
Reiserfs tends so fragment over time (as jfs) so on the long run they will suck. Again, it depends on usage. Moreover reiserfs is quite bad handling huge files.
I do use XFS on rotational hard drives. Why? because I like it

Here comes the funny part. I use reiserfs on my eee. Eee has SSD drive, that means no moving parts on drive. This thing flies. I've overwritten the whole ssd and I haven't seen any performance penalty due data fragmentation (that's because ssd drives have a huge boost on seeking speed). I really like this FS for this machine but, I repeat myself, **I won't use it** on my desktop PC.

YMMV.

b4283 · 2009-02-10 15:40:05

I think ext4 is the most recommended since it's newest, and is maintained by the kernel.
However I'm looking forward to btrfs.... it's a good replacement for jfs,xfs,reiserfs and other performance-entitled file systems.

fwojciec · 2009-02-10 17:14:23

Ext4 is the fastest of the ones mentioned in general use. Period. I used to be a huge fan of reiserfs in the past, but now it's been replaced by ext4 on all system partitions on my computers. I still use ext3 for data storage. I could never quite understand the appeal of JFS, nor have I ever found any benchmarks/tests with reliable estimation of how much power it saves. My guess is that it is not a huge amount, since when I used JFS on my laptop I didn't notice any improvement as far as battery life is concerned.

Last edited by fwojciec (2009-02-10 17:15:28)

Wintervenom · 2009-02-10 21:09:10

Ext3.

Last edited by Wintervenom (2009-08-05 15:17:17)

waytin · 2009-02-11 02:55:52

b4283 wrote:

I think ext4 is the most recommended since it's newest, and is maintained by the kernel.
However I'm looking forward to btrfs.... it's a good replacement for jfs,xfs,reiserfs and other performance-entitled file systems.

Btrfs seems to be the next generation FS, and is very powerful.
But I don't know when it will be stable and the kernel will support it.
Some data show it is better than ext4.
I think it is worthy to be expected.

waytin · 2009-02-11 03:08:58

Perhaps we should add XFS.
See http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=a … arks&num=1 , a test of some file systems.

ataraxia · 2009-02-11 04:08:41

I like XFS. It's very mature, and has excellent utilities, like live defrag, grow, dump, and restore. It's fast and efficient on anything that doesn't involve lots of little files.

Downsides: Can't be shrunk (only grown). Makes "pacman -Sy" really slow. (I got over this... Having to wait an extra minute or so when I update the pacman DB every day or two isn't a big deal to me. I'm too old to care about such things )

mandog · 2009-02-12 07:45:06

I use jfs for everything have never suffered data loss gparted disc check always works as far as crashes I don't have many or lockups.

Zibi1981 · 2009-02-12 17:55:11

I also use JFS, but I used to have my partitions on Ext3. The first one doesn't have to be checked every 20 mounts. It's also a bit faster and less resource consuming when using deadline elevator.

Cotton · 2009-02-22 09:31:36

ataraxia wrote:

...Downsides: Can't be shrunk (only grown). Makes "pacman -Sy" really slow. (I got over this... Having to wait an extra minute or so when I update the pacman DB every day or two isn't a big deal to me. I'm too old to care about such things )

And it requires an uninterruptible power supply to prevent massive file system corruption, due to its use of cacheing data in RAM.

cerbie · 2009-02-22 10:43:21

EXT4: should mature into an awesome FS: faster than JFS, and more fault-tolerant. I'll try it one of these months.

XFS: nice. By design, it throws away files on an unclean mount, though. I never had FS corruption, but it would just up and get rid of critical files, like fstab, if I had just edited them and then had a nasty shutdown. Maybe it's a good /tmp FS?

RFS3: it used to be fast with all but large (hundreds of MB) files. IME, the maturing of the 2.6 CFQ and deadline schedulers took care of that. Fsck was never a strong point.
RFS4: what happens to a jet airplane if a bird gets sucked in an engine? It was kind of like that.

EXT3 (as a preface to JFS): from early 1998 up to late 2007, moving from 6.4 to 8.4 to 2x6.4+8.4 to 10 to 20 to 120GB, and well over 100 2000 and XP boxes serviced...I had significant corruption of NTFS FS or files all of three times, and none rendered the system unusable (it took a Win98 low-level FAT32 working trojan to do that...friggin' thing had a low threat level according to Semantic, but ate almost all my C: drive). Since moving to Linux in late '07, I've now had at least six partitions made FUBAR, and a handful that went to read-only at the slightest provocation (to give credit where it's due: I could get data off of those before wiping the partition). I've been working with itty computers lately, and EXT3 has been nothing but trouble (many hard-locks, kernel panics, app crashes while writing, etc.--a little hard on the FS). It seems to be fine on machines running all the time, that do their writing sparsely.

JFS: fast as EXT3, and seems to always recover on an unclean mount. On very slow hardware, it is definitely faster than EXT3...but I mean hardware competitive with Pentium MMXs, where EXT3 regularly maxes out the CPU. Cons? You'd best have your data backed up (but, if you trust any single copy of your data, you're asking for trouble, regardless of FS). It generally can bring your FS back to an old good state. But if not, it will happily throw files away, to make the FS itself clean quicker. So far the worst I've lost were Firefox cookies and other such goodies (never my session, luckily), but it's enough to show the possibilities.

Last edited by cerbie (2009-02-22 10:50:35)

Bogart · 2009-02-22 11:00:46

Personally I think the best strategy is to stay with ext3 and upgrade to ext4 in 2-3 months time (you don't even need to reinstall, it can be upgraded easily).

ReiserFS was a good filesystem for a desktop, but it's not maintained for years.

JFS is ok, but much less tested than Ext3/4 by kernel developers and such, so it can have problems at some point (the filesystem itself hardly changes, I even wonder if it's actively developed anymore).

XFS works good for some people, bad for others. It must run with barriers on to be safe, with a performance penalty for intensive writes.

fukawi2 · 2009-02-22 22:06:22

This sounds lot like this thread:
http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=60852

Arch Linux

#1 2009-02-10 15:21:39

what about these file systems: ext4, reiserfs, and jfs?

#2 2009-02-10 15:29:47

Re: what about these file systems: ext4, reiserfs, and jfs?

#3 2009-02-10 15:40:05

Re: what about these file systems: ext4, reiserfs, and jfs?

#4 2009-02-10 17:14:23

Re: what about these file systems: ext4, reiserfs, and jfs?

#5 2009-02-10 21:09:10

Re: what about these file systems: ext4, reiserfs, and jfs?

#6 2009-02-11 02:55:52

Re: what about these file systems: ext4, reiserfs, and jfs?

#7 2009-02-11 03:08:58

Re: what about these file systems: ext4, reiserfs, and jfs?

#8 2009-02-11 04:08:41

Re: what about these file systems: ext4, reiserfs, and jfs?

#9 2009-02-12 07:45:06

Re: what about these file systems: ext4, reiserfs, and jfs?

#10 2009-02-12 17:55:11

Re: what about these file systems: ext4, reiserfs, and jfs?

#11 2009-02-22 09:31:36

Re: what about these file systems: ext4, reiserfs, and jfs?

#12 2009-02-22 10:43:21

Re: what about these file systems: ext4, reiserfs, and jfs?

#13 2009-02-22 11:00:46

Re: what about these file systems: ext4, reiserfs, and jfs?

#14 2009-02-22 22:06:22

Re: what about these file systems: ext4, reiserfs, and jfs?

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