The excerpt below is in the Gentoo install guide (http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/gentoo-x86-install.xml#doc_chap6), but it applies to any system...
---------------------- Creating filesystems Now that the partitions have been created, it's time to set up filesystems on the boot and root partitions so that they can be mounted and used to store data. We will also configure the swap partition to serve as swap storage. Gentoo Linux supports a variety of different types of filesystems; each type has its strengths and weaknesses and its own set of performance characteristics. Currently, we support the creation of ext2, ext3, XFS, JFS and ReiserFS filesystems. ext2 is the tried and true Linux filesystem but doesn't have metadata journaling, which means that routine ext2 filesystem checks at startup time can be quite time-consuming. There is now quite a selection of newer-generation journaled filesystems that can be checked for consistency very quickly and are thus generally preferred over their non-journaled counterparts. Journaled filesystems prevent long delays when you boot your system and your filesystem happens to be in an inconsistent state. ext3 is the journaled version of the ext2 filesystem, providing metadata journaling for fast recovery in addition to other enhanced journaling modes like full data and ordered data journaling. ext3 is a very good and reliable filesystem. It offers generally decent performance under most conditions. Because it does not extensively employ the use of "trees" in its internal design, it doesn't scale very well, meaning that it is not an ideal choice for very large filesystems, or situations where you will be handling very large files or large quantities of files in a single directory. But when used within its design parameters, ext3 is an excellent filesystem. ReiserFS is a B*-tree based filesystem that has very good overall performance and greatly outperforms both ext2 and ext3 when dealing with small files (files less than 4k), often by a factor of 10x-15x. ReiserFS also scales extremely well and has metadata journaling. As of kernel 2.4.18+, ReiserFS is now rock-solid and highly recommended for use both as a general-purpose filesystem and for extreme cases such as the creation of large filesystems, the use of many small files, very large files and directories containing tens of thousands of files. ReiserFS is the filesystem we recommend by default for all non-boot partitions. XFS is a filesystem with metadata journaling that is fully supported under Gentoo Linux's xfs-sources kernel. It comes with a robust feature-set and is optimized for scalability. We only recommend using this filesystem on Linux systems with high-end SCSI and/or fibre channel storage and a uninterruptible power supply. Because XFS aggressively caches in-transit data in RAM, improperly designed programs (those that don't take proper precautions when writing files to disk and there are quite a few of them) can lose a good deal of data if the system goes down unexpectedly. JFS is IBM's high-performance journaling filesystem. It has recently become production-ready and there hasn't been a sufficient track record to comment positively nor negatively on its general stability at this point. If you're looking for the most rugged journaling filesystem, use ext3. If you're looking for a good general-purpose high-performance filesystem with journaling support, use ReiserFS; both ext3 and ReiserFS are mature, refined and recommended for general use. ---------------------- The best answer I can give you is "it depends on what you're doing". I personally use Ext3 for my /boot partition, and reiserfs for my root partition (I don't have need to break up into other partitions.... yet...). If your partition will host lots of smaller files that may be critical, the Reiser is probably the better choice as it has better performance for small files, and is a journalized system to (help) ensure file integrity. Hope this helps. Shawn On August 18, 2003 07:23 pm, Mathieu Jobin wrote: > How to choose between thoose file system ? > > Mathieu
