As far as I understand it, if you're not making modifications then ext3 is approximately the same as ext2 (and, from memory, read performance is the same). However, I don't believe there's much of an overhead in 3 over 2 (again, from memory), so I personally would just plump for 3. You're maybe going to be changing stuff on it occasionally, so it'll be helpful for those times.
I've never used NTFS in anger on Linux, other than to occasionally do a bit of diagnosis, so I can't really comment on its current performance I'm afraid. It's a fact, though, that there will be enormously more people using ext2/3 on Linux than NTFS so if you're after stability that may be important. Given that most of that drive is taken up with actual data (as they're FLACs) I suspect the differences you've seen are in one of two areas: 1. inodes. ext2/3 will allocate a number in proportion to the size of the drive (an inode roughly equates to a file or directory). If the drive is storing only huge files then you'll not be going anywhere near the default number that will be allocated. If you care, you could tune this down when creating the filesystem. 2. the 'root reservation'. There's normally 5 or 10% (I forget which) of a filesystem reserved for root (the logic being that some space should be available to allow administration in the case of the disk being filled as things tend to break when disks really do run out of space). On a very large drive that may equate to a lot of space which you may think is lost. You can reduce this reserved space at any time with 'tune2fs'. I don't think there's anything 'wrong' with ext2 - in fact it was the only option for a long time and it's worked very well for a very large number of people. Most people just go for ext3 these days (it's the default on all the distributions I've come across), but it's probably a personal choice. Stuart gharris999 wrote: > So, if one doesn't need journaling on a drive (and why would journaling > be advantageous on a drive that holds only static audio files?) what's > wrong with using ext2 or even ntfs? Other than journaling, what are > the big advantages of ext3 over ext2? > > It's true that I don't know anything about journaling (and I only know > enough about linux in general to be a danger to myself and others) but > I assume that most of a journaling fs's advantages come into play in > cases where enhanced error recovery of volatile data is needed. > > Also, in may case, I do seem to be able to squeeze more data onto a > ntfs drive, at least vs. ext2. My flac library is currently just > bumping up against the limits of my 750gig drive. In fact, I'll be > starting to copy my library to a 1T drive later this month. > > > _______________________________________________ unix mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/unix
