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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
Kaeru ,

Xfs is solid Commenting b/c I’m disappointed no one else recommends

Psyhackological OP ,
@Psyhackological@lemmy.ml avatar

I use it in my work but ZFS seems interesting alternative.

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.

Psyhackological OP ,
@Psyhackological@lemmy.ml avatar

Do lsblk -f and you will know for /home or / partitions. But probably yeah. However Fedora uses btrfs as default now so depends on the distro.

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.

Psyhackological OP ,
@Psyhackological@lemmy.ml avatar

usability is a mixed bag

Could you please elaborate?

Diplomjodler3 ,

Ext4 cause that’s the default and I’m lazy.

bionicjoey ,

Based

Psyhackological OP ,
@Psyhackological@lemmy.ml avatar

That’s a valid reason too. However sometimes btrfs has become the default ;)

Diplomjodler3 ,

Not in Mint.

Psyhackological OP ,
@Psyhackological@lemmy.ml avatar

Yeah I think Ubuntu and Debian based distro prefers it for stability reasons. Fedora I think switched to btrfs by default.

ScottE ,

ZFS for nearly everything plus ZFSBootMenu EFI on root data pools. Get a bad upgrade? No problem, boot a previous snapshot (auto created with a pacman hook), which I had to do recently when 6.6.39 LTS kernel had a bug. Snapshots are also great when doing things such as upgrading postgres, hass, Plex, etc.

Toribor ,
@Toribor@corndog.social avatar

I’ve been using ZFS now for a few years for all my data drives/pools but I haven’t gotten brave enough to boot from it yet. Snapshotting a system drive would be really handy.

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.

_thebrain_ ,

Good to know. I know a couple of people in the steam deck world who dual boot windows and steamos and have their games on a btrfs partition that use it so they don’t need games installed twice … I have no desire to do this so I have never tried.

henfredemars ,

It’s possible I was just unlucky, but data corruption makes it harder for me to sleep at night. I choose to be a little more conservative and consider that tool beta quality.

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.

marty_relaxes ,

Additionally, at least for my use-case btrfs benefits me since it is less picky about drive sizes being the same and duplicating everything correctly - letting you essentially just throw additional storage at it as you acquire it.

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.

teawrecks ,

Not only is there btrfs support for Windows, but since windows and linux root structures don’t conflict, someone got both arch and windows booting from the same partition. Is it a good idea? Hell no. But can it be done? Apparently yes.

wargreymon ,

Google cloud storage, copilot my files with Microsoft, crowdstrike running in background for better security.

IsoSpandy ,

Apple chastity cage to prevent me from being tempted by Linux. /s

Psyhackological OP ,
@Psyhackological@lemmy.ml avatar

I wouldn’t be suprised if that’s the case for Windows users.

nobleshift ,
@nobleshift@lemmy.world avatar

ZFS

Psyhackological OP ,
@Psyhackological@lemmy.ml avatar

I see it’s the GOAT as fs

ulkesh ,
@ulkesh@beehaw.org avatar

Btrfs, because I’ve heard good things.

possiblylinux127 ,

It is very hard to corrupt

Psyhackological OP ,
@Psyhackological@lemmy.ml avatar

Same

Matriks404 ,
  • Btrfs on my laptop with openSUSE, mainly because it’s default, but also for its snapshot capabilities.
  • Whatever file system my default Raspberry Pi installation uses (probably Ext4).
  • NTFS on my main computer With Windows 10, because… well… I don’t really have any other choice, although I know there’s some kind of 3rd party Btrfs driver for Windows as well and you can ever have boot partition formatted as Btrfs, but I think it’s still experimental.
rotopenguin , (edited )
@rotopenguin@infosec.pub avatar

ExFAT is the LCD filesystem for flash sticks. FAT32 is the filesystem that you have to use for devices designed back when Microsoft was awful about Exfat licensing.

Everywhere else, Btrfs. If Oracle didn’t poison-pill ZFS licensing and it was common on Linux, I would be using that instead. Basically, taking it on faith that a drive didn’t fuck up your data is crazy. The most basic responsibility for a filesystem should be ensuring that “the files come out exactly the same as when they went in”.

nickiam2 ,

I use ext4 for all boot drives and root filesystems. Anything really important goes on a ZFS array. And for my Linux isos, I use a drive with ext4 + snapraid. The parity drive has xfs because ext4 has a 16tb file size limit.

Got rid of anything NTFS as it was unreliable and slow on Linux.

featured ,

ZFS for my server’s root pool and main storage pool. Ext4 with snapraid for my media pool. Currently btrfs on my desktop and ext4 under vanillaos on my laptop (not sure if I could partition it manually to use btrfs but I’m considering that for snapshots)

doubletwist ,

XFS on my server VMs and my laptops and desktops.

ZFS on my file server. I’d use it on my laptops and desktops too (and have done when I was using Xubuntu) but I’ve switched toFedora which doesn’t come with a way to easily install with ZFS and I don’t feel like jumping through hoops to get it done. And I can’t stand btrfs. I don’t know what it is about it, but I just don’t like it.

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