I'm switching to a new hard drive on one of my computers, and I'm curious
about which file system type is best for which sort of situation. When I
first played with Linux, it seemed like ext2 was the only common choice,
but now ext3 and reiserfs are pretty common, not to mention XFS and JFS.
In recent years I've just used reiserfs for everything, but I'm curious if
there are good reasons to use something different. I realize that which
FS to use depends on the requirements, so let me explain those a bit.
All my machines are just for use by a few people, so downtime is not a big
concern; thus, the length of time it takes to check a file system not
cleanly unmounted is not an issue (within reason). As you might guess, I
don't know a whole lot about FSs, so something with reasonably well
developed tools in Linux would be preferable. Generally, I have 3 sorts
of partitions:
/
The root file system is generally 1-5 GB and generally has small to
moderate size files. I don't heavily customize my system, so reinstalling
the OS would not be the end of the world. As a result, preventing loss of
data is not the primary concern here. Probably the biggest concern is
speed. Efficient use of disk space is probably a secondary concern.
/home
This will generally by 5-10 GB and contain files ranging from a few k to
100 MBs or so. Since this is where most personal files are located,
obviously I'd like to avoid data corruption as much as possible, though
this should be backed up. Speed and efficient use of disk space are still
a concern, but probably secondary.
/storage
This would be some large partition for storing all the my eMusic mp3s and
other media. It would be about 100 GB and contain files from 1-500 MB in
size. The integrity of the data and efficient use of disk space are the
most important factors here. Speed is probably less important. I was
especially wondering in this case if some FSs would perform poorly with a
partition this large.
Which FS is best suited to each task, or does it really just not make that
much difference?
Nick
- [UM-LINUX] The best filesystem for the job Nick Cummings
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