Best FS for 500X5GB hardware RAID5?

DarksideEE7 · 2010-10-05 03:53:40

I would like to hear your thoughts on this. I have a 500x5GB RAID5 array currently formatted with NTFS (from Windows), and I'm currently moving all of the data over to another RAID0 partition in order to allow me to delete the partition and reformat it in a different file system. The reason for this is that NTFS doesn't allow me to prevent accidental file deletion using an immutable flag using chattr:

sudo chattr -R +i /media/Perc\ RAID5/Music

Here is some info on it:

Storing documents, music, movies, and television shows. Most of the storage it will be larger mkv files (so >5GB).
It will be for archiving only, where the data is mirrored on my RAID0 /home partition, which is where I point Amarok and browse to read documents, etc.

I will occasionally watch Movies and TV shows from it, but other than that it's strictly for archiving. That being said I need

I would like to choose a FS that I can still read from Windows 7 in order to play video files from Windows 7 x64. So far I'm reading up between ext4, XFS, JFS, and Reiser. I don't really need write support in Windows 7.

I know none of these FSes are natively support in Windows (which is a joke, but I digress....), however I've used programs that implement ext in the past. I tried to get ext2fs to work with my /home ext4 partition, but it couldn't read it. It was able to detect it and assign a drive letter, but it said it needed to be formatted before.

If anyone has any tips/thoughts on any of this I would appreciate it. Right now I'm backing everything up and reading on the different file systems, then afterward I'll go ahead and format. I may also recreate the array if anyone has suggestions for a different stripe size to go with the FS....currently I have 64 kB stripe size IIRC.

Thanks!

DarksideEE7 · 2010-10-05 17:06:58

So nobody has any suggestions? I formatted it as ext4 for now.....I may try another, but ext4 is pretty fast so far.
I need to find a good method of reading the filesystem under Windows 7 x64. I would prefer to use coLinux, but unfortunately it isn't supported in Windows 7 x64 yet.

So far the only thing that looks like it will work is ext2read....

Last edited by DarksideEE7 (2010-10-05 17:07:13)

eliphant0723 · 2010-10-07 02:44:38

You are the same guy on the overclockers.com forum, aren't you? Your windows is on a separate and external HDD, right?

When you say 500x5GB, you must mean 5x500GB?!

Anyway, you could:

Make a partition that both windows and Arch can understand;
Format your array ext3, and keep on using 'ext2 IFS';
Setup a virtual machine and use the hdd that Arch is installed on as a virtual disk, sharing files through a shared folder to your windows;
Move your windows hdd to a new box, and use samba or nfs to access your Arch.

With your configuration, there isn't much you can do that will be easy and quick. Your best bets are going with a common FS, ext3, or the VM, in my less-than-educated-opinion.

Last edited by eliphant0723 (2010-10-07 02:45:56)

DarksideEE7 · 2010-10-07 03:01:30

I'm on overclock.net, not overclockers.com, but yea LOL I meant 5*500GB. What I've done so far is

Create 1 large partition as ext4
Use ext2fs to read that partition while in Windows. When I want to watch a movie, I can copy the desired file to the windows drive and watch it.

I think that's what I'll stick with. I would like to try out JFS and XFS to see how they perform, as both of them are very stable file systems. I'm getting really good performance right now...I'm really impressed. I was getting decent performance with the old ntfs partition, however there was a large CPU overhead with when using fuse.

I've been meaning to run some benches using Phoronix test suite...maybe I'll do that tonight.

When support is finally released for coLinux I'll be in business, since I can create an Arch environment that will be embedded in an executable, then I don't have to worry about any of this.

I don't know if any of you guys have read about coLinux, but it's a really amazing idea. Much better than Cywin IMO.

http://www.colinux.org/

Eventually I'm going to build a massive RAID5 array when I buy some 2TB hard drives.

Last edited by DarksideEE7 (2010-10-07 03:07:44)

eliphant0723 · 2010-10-20 08:45:04

I'm glad you've got things working out for you!

I've heard JFS is very stable and good for dealing with LOTS of file entries. I use XFS. Good with big files. Both JFS and XFS have the down-side of potential file corruption with power loss as they only journal metadata. There are good wikipedia articles on JFS and XFS, as well as the Arch wiki articles here. XFS has a community website: Xfs.org There is a lot you can do to improve XFS performance when creating the XFS partiton.

You should also keep your eyes on ZFS and BTRFS. ZFS is currently being ported to linux. BTRFS is kinda like the linux version of ZFS, but is still in alpha-- I think. Both are filesystems of the future!

CoLinux is very cool, btw. I'll think of it the next time I try to get a friend to use Linux

Last edited by eliphant0723 (2010-10-20 08:58:33)

DarksideEE7 · 2010-10-20 08:58:14

I've never used ZFS, but I've heard great things about it's performance in Solaris. Apparently the snapshot feature is a big deal.

Right now I'm playing with different IO schedulers. Another guy with the same RAID card said that he benefited by adjusting the read-ahead buffer using the 'blockdev' command. I plan to test that after the IO scheduler. I'm trying to decide between deadline and noop. Supposedly noop performs better with the PERC 5/i. however most people generally suggest deadline for standard desktop use.

eliphant0723 · 2010-10-20 09:13:32

Hmmm.

Read any of Con Kolivas's stuff?

I recall reading a little about his work about a year ago. His stuff is geared more to desktops. Are you interested in actual performance (ie best benchmark), or percieved performance (ie system reacts quickly even though you are compiling a program, compressing and decompressing a 2GB file, and watching a movie)?

Last edited by eliphant0723 (2010-10-20 09:27:31)

DarksideEE7 · 2010-10-20 09:49:26

Definitely perceived performance. This is a workstation/media PC and file server, so I am typically doin quite a bit of multitasking on it. That's probably why I'll go with deadline..

EDIT:

I didn't comment further earlier this morning because I was on my phone............but damn that guy is really intelligent. He codes IO schedulers in his spare time. He's pretty much a nerd superhero.

Last edited by DarksideEE7 (2010-10-20 18:38:34)

Arch Linux

#1 2010-10-05 03:53:40

Best FS for 500X5GB hardware RAID5?

#2 2010-10-05 17:06:58

Re: Best FS for 500X5GB hardware RAID5?

#3 2010-10-07 02:44:38

Re: Best FS for 500X5GB hardware RAID5?

#4 2010-10-07 03:01:30

Re: Best FS for 500X5GB hardware RAID5?

#5 2010-10-20 08:45:04

Re: Best FS for 500X5GB hardware RAID5?

#6 2010-10-20 08:58:14

Re: Best FS for 500X5GB hardware RAID5?

#7 2010-10-20 09:13:32

Re: Best FS for 500X5GB hardware RAID5?

#8 2010-10-20 09:49:26

Re: Best FS for 500X5GB hardware RAID5?

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