There have been multiple accounts created with the sole purpose of posting advertisement posts or replies containing unsolicited advertising.

Accounts which solely post advertisements, or persistently post them may be terminated.

What file systems are you using on your devices and why?

I want to learn more about file systems from the practical point of view so I know what to expect, how to approach them and what experience positive or negative you had / have.

I found this wikipedia’s comparison but I want your hands-on views.

For now my mental list is

  • NTFS - for some reason TVs on USB love these and also Windows + Linux can read and write this
  • Ext4 - solid fs with journaling but Linux specific
  • Btrfs - some modern fs with snapshot capability, Linux specific
  • xfs - servers really like these as they are performant, Linux specific
  • FAT32 - limited but recognizable everywhere
  • exFAT - like FAT32 but less recognizable and less limited
ssm ,
@ssm@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

OpenBSD laptop: ffs2, vfat for efi system partition

OpenBSD server: ffs2

Linux phone running PmOS: ext2 boot partition, ext4 root partition

Void Linux VM: ext2

Alpine Linux VM: ext4

Steam Deck: ??? (too lazy to check, 9/10 chance it’s ext4)

loutr ,
@loutr@sh.itjust.works avatar

Yes the Steam deck FS is ext4.

Why ext2 on Void?

TimeSquirrel ,
@TimeSquirrel@kbin.melroy.org avatar

NTFS - for some reason TVs on USB love these and also Windows + Linux can read and write this

Yeah, Linux CAN write to it, but I wouldn't be using it for my core system partition anytime soon.

Ext4 here because I'm old and stuck in my ways. It's familiar and I know what to expect. Also why I use Debian. I don't like surprises.

HarriPotero ,
@HarriPotero@lemmy.world avatar

Been running BTRFS since 2010. Ext2/3/4 before that.

Using it for CoW, de-duplication, compression. My home file server has had a long-lived array of mis-matched devices. Started at 4x2TB, through 6x4TB and now 2x18+4TB. I just move up a size whenever a disk fails.

kittenroar ,

Just ext4 on my Linux things; I got scared away from btrfs because of some file loss horror stories

PoopMonster ,

Whatever my installation CD had as default 😂. I’m guessing ext4?

lemmyvore ,

Depends on the distro, some have started to offer btrfs by default.

MoogleMaestro ,

I use BTRFS for the snapshot and subvolume tools.

It is pretty good but usability is a mixed bag. Always getting better by the month though, it feels like.

n2burns ,

It’s all Ext4, but I run SnapRAID on top of that on my data drives. I’m sure lots of people would tell me I should use ZFS/BTRFS instead, but I’m used to SnapRAID, and I like the idea if something goes wrong, I won’t lose all my data.

henfredemars , (edited )

I care a lot about filesystems.

BTRFS in FS-managed RAID configuration for automatic self-healing and snapshots for instant automated backups (though I keep a traditional backup too for protection against bugs and user error).

Storage is cheap compared to how much I value my data. BTRFS has very good support on Linux, integration with some backup tools, and I really want to use a FS that has full data checksums to make sure the data stays correct at rest. I like that I don’t have to use equal sized drives and can use whatever I have available, though I would appreciate a better read distribution model rather than the current where it just chooses a random drive to read from when multiple copies are available.

Disadvantages include difficulty accessing from Windows in my experience, less than stellar performance on HDDs, not very space efficient for small files systems because of the bulky metadata, and some uncommon RAID types don’t work correctly and will eat your data. I also don’t recommend it for use over USB because many such devices don’t correctly implement sync, and this is very important to stay on the correct transaction number and prevent file system inconsistencies. If I had to boot from USB, I wouldn’t pick BTRFS.

I don’t think exFAT or FAT32 offer POSIX permissions. I’m not sure if you could have a root file system there.

whostosay ,

|I care a lot about filesystems.

Damn bro, I didn’t think I was gonna cum in /linux

_thebrain_ ,

Have you seen/tried github.com/maharmstone/btrfs ?

I have heard it is decent but have never had a need to try it.

henfredemars ,

Yes I have and it caused file system corruption the two times I tried it. Something wasn’t quite right.

Telorand ,

So, genuine question: why btrfs instead of zfs? Sounds like your use case would fit the latter.

Kualk ,

BTRFS is zero effort on root, because it is included in kernel. ZFS on root is extra effort at least on Arch, due to licensing restrictions.

henfredemars ,

Does ZFS handle data duplication on unequal sized volumes or heterogeneous pools? I don’t believe so, and BTRFS was a first class installer option.

scottmeme ,

ZFS, got 5 system with different zpools

avidamoeba ,
@avidamoeba@lemmy.ca avatar

On root?

ryannathans ,

Mine is

scottmeme ,

I do have 1 system with ZFS mirror boot drives

avidamoeba ,
@avidamoeba@lemmy.ca avatar

Did you use an installer to do it or manual setup?

scottmeme ,

Proxmox install on the zfs mirror boot plus some other pools, everything else is currently truenas single boot drive with pools

I do have other proxmox stuff running zfs*

mayidar ,

I use Btrfs for my root partition to be able to rollback if something goes wrong after update. XFS: in all other cases, since I hate the lost+found directory on ext4. Although I don’t think there’s any significant difference between ext4 and xfs in performance and reliability.

cyborganism ,

I’m curious now about BTRFS.

How do you roll back in case of problems?

mayidar ,

discovery.endeavouros.com/…/02/

Basically, I just followed this tutorial for my EndeavourOS installations. It’s as easy as choosing an older entry in GRUB. Fedora offers something similar by default, and I think Tumbleweed does too.

Moreover I’m now playing with Arkane Linux (arkanelinux.org), immutable flavour of Arch, it features another magic with btrfs and rollbacks without snapshots and GRUB

Zikeji ,
@Zikeji@programming.dev avatar

Bookmarking Arkane. I’m a huge fan of Fedora Atomic but miss AUR.

cyborganism ,

Oh ok cool! I’m going to check it out.

I’m taking a lot of notes for my next install. Trying to build something solid with Kubuntu.

Kualk ,

Take snapshot. If problem occurs, manually change boot label to use snapshot label.

ulkesh ,
@ulkesh@beehaw.org avatar

Btrfs, because I’ve heard good things.

savvywolf ,
@savvywolf@pawb.social avatar

I’ve been basically using btrfs on a lot of my disks because of the features it has.

Before I switched to a borg based system, my backups partition used btrfs for compression.

My main OS disk is btrfs so I can use timeshift snapshots, which are really worth checking out if you tinker with your system a lot.

I have two more btrfs partitions software raid0’d together for my steam library, nix store and other big but loosable things.

And my main home folder uses btrfs because I think the checksumming thing it does is more reliable for error detection, and cow is more fault tollerant on power failure?

… And I now fell like I’m one of those people with an over engineered storage solution. I just never get rid of old ssds or hard disks!

seaQueue , (edited )
@seaQueue@lemmy.world avatar

Btrfs, ZFS and ext4. My servers use ZFS, my client machines mostly use btrfs and I have a sprinkling of ext4 partitions for specific workloads. I’m all in on CoW filesystems for snapshots, send receive, transparent compression and reflinks. I like btrfs on client machines and SBCs because it’s easily available (baked into the kernel) and doesn’t require maintaining dkms or holding kernel versions until ZFS supports them and because snapshot handling and other filesystem admin tasks are simple and straightforward. I run ZFS wherever data integrity is important, eg: storage servers and backup targets, but largely prefer working with btrfs.

soundconjurer ,
@soundconjurer@mstdn.social avatar

@Psyhackological
Work stations all run Ext4.
Main server: Ext4 on main partition, ZFS RAIDZ2 on the data.
Secondary server: BTRFS on main, BTRFS RAID1 on data.

If BTRFS could natively encrypt and had stable RAID6, I'd be using it probably on everything.

eager_eagle ,
@eager_eagle@lemmy.world avatar

F2FS, because solid state and speed

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • [email protected]
  • random
  • lifeLocal
  • goranko
  • All magazines
    •