EXT3, Reiserfs, xfs...any comments on the filesystem types?

[champagnemojo]

I recently reinstalled Knoppix yet again and chose to go with a different filesystem this time. I had been using EXT3 everytime, but read somewhere that Reiserfs and XFS are faster.

Is there a reason why choosing the file-system is left out of the newer installer script? I had to use knx-hdinstall in order to choose a different one. Let me know if the option is in there and I'm just missing it.

Also, is there any reason to avoid Reiserfs and XFS? I actually tried XFS first and the install didn't seem to finish correctly...which may have just been a coincidence. But I then tried Reiserfs and it went fine. It also does seem to be faster than EXT3 was.

[turbinater]

If your looking for as much speed as possible, go with ext2. ext3 otherwise.

Reiserfs4 is faster than ext3, but I believe ext2 is faster than Reiserfs4. Theres also been many bugs in Reiserfs4, and it still has many bugs to be fixed.

[fingers99]

I bailed out of using Reiser after it completely (and irrevocably) screwed up a SuSE install (in SuSE it's the default). A few days later I read something from the Gentoo folk advising that it shouldn't be used!

Although I hear that those issues are fixed, I've never (except by my own daftness) lost anything of ext2 or ext3 which -- if the worse happens -- seem to have better recovery tools.

I read that Reiser is way faster (at least for files of a certain size!) but for the moment I'll stick with ext3.

[champagnemojo]

Yikes. I didn't know about that fingers. So far it's working great. I don't really have any important files in this partition, so I'm gonna give it a shot I think. If it screws me up you can say I told you so.

[windos_no_thanks]

Another thing that sometimes is an issue is that reiserfs and reiser4 are superior at utilizing the available disk space.

[EmDee]

Whatever you do, DON'T choose ext2! ReiserFs, ext3, xfs and jfs are all journaled file systems that ensure the integrity of all data stored on a partition formatted with 'em. You could in fact just turn off the power and you'd still have a good fs and you can boot without a filesystem check!
Xfs is a port from SGI Irix and Jfs was written by IBM, both are relatively new and potentially buggy. ReiserFS has been around for some time and has superior performance when dealing with lots of very small files (under 4kb IIRC) I have used it for some time with no troubles so I'd recommend it... Ext3 is actually ext2 with a simple journaling mechanism attached to it and is therefore the most bug-free journaled fs around. If you absolutely need to, you can also mount ext3 with a ext2 driver, without journaling capabilities of course. And it's not that slow either, so...

Well, it's up to you, but I'd say it's save to choose from either ReiserFS or Ext3!

[windos_no_thanks]

Xfs is a port from SGI Irix and Jfs was written by IBM, both are relatively new and potentially buggy.

Xfs is actually pretty good too (although it is a bit less efficient than reiserfs at most things)
IMO jfs is the clear loser in the bunch, the only reason to use it is if you already have some jfs
filesystem running on a different OS and you need to mount it on Linux too. For any other purpose one of the others will be more suitable.

[A. Jorge Garcia]

I had lots of trouble loosing data with ext2, especially with unintended re-boots or power-downs, but never with ext3.

Good Luck,
AJG

[champagnemojo]

Any notions why choosing the file-system has been left out of knoppix-installer? Is it likely to be added back in later?

[A. Jorge Garcia]

Well, I always set up my partitions with QTparted before using knoppix-installer, so the format is chosen ahead of time.

Regards,