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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
CalcProgrammer1 ,
@CalcProgrammer1@lemmy.ml avatar

Pretty much all ext4 except for a few Windows installs on NTFS.

cmnybo ,

Most of my drives are EXT4, but I started using BTRFS a couple years ago and will be using it on all new installs from now on. I really like being able to make snapshots and compression reduces the install size quite a bit.

kbal ,
@kbal@fedia.io avatar

ext4, but the btrfs activity visible in the kernel changelog has slowed down recently after a long period of many bug fixes, so maybe I'll give it a try next time.

thingsiplay ,

same

unn ,

Btrfs, but if I’d start from scratch today I’d go for bcachefs.

Psyhackological OP ,
@Psyhackological@lemmy.ml avatar

Even now?

unn ,

Yes

VitabytesDev ,

ext4 on everything except external drives where I put NTFS.

Psyhackological OP ,
@Psyhackological@lemmy.ml avatar

So you have a dual boot or Windows machines I’m guessing for any of these

  1. Microsoft Office
  2. Gaming
  3. Adobe
VitabytesDev ,

I don’t dual boot, I just have some other Windows machines that I use rarely for Windows-only software that require an external connection, like Odin for Samsung devices.

tired_n_bored ,
  • Ext4 main computer
  • NTFS for hard drives and stuff that need to be shared with other people using Windows
  • BTRFS for the NAS
Psyhackological OP ,
@Psyhackological@lemmy.ml avatar

Interesting choice for NAS, why not the others that seem like better alternatives?

tired_n_bored ,

Well, as far as I know, BTRFS and ZFS are the recommended file systems for NAS’s. They have self-healing capabilities so I can be slightly more sure that my data does not get corrupted over time.

Psyhackological OP ,
@Psyhackological@lemmy.ml avatar

Is self-healing process automated or you need to somehow enable it so it happens from time to time?

tired_n_bored ,

You have to run a so-called scrub command that checks for errors and tries to repair them. You can automate to run it every month or so

Psyhackological OP ,
@Psyhackological@lemmy.ml avatar

In a cronjob or something alike?

tired_n_bored ,

Yup

Presi300 ,
@Presi300@lemmy.world avatar

EXT4 on PC, ZFS on my server and APFS on my mac

Andromxda ,
@Andromxda@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

Btrfs on my Linux desktops and laptops, ZFS on my server, APFS on my Apple devices I guess

mindbleach ,

NTFS for the drive I had before jumping to Mint. Currently reporting several hundred gigabytes free, but refusing to make any new files, because… I don’t know. I’ll deal with it after an upcoming move.

The OS / home SSD is ext4, and so is the fat loud hard disk I recently purchased through an entire month of fighting Amazon over gift cards.

rjek ,

ext4 because I value my data and don’t want to lose it. I used to mess about with ZFS for mass storage but it’s a university course to learn how to use and have decent performance.

I used to use XFS, but ext4 caught up.

And I used to use XFS… on something other than Linux.

gerdesj ,

xfs has reflinks. That means you can copy huge wodges of data nearly for free on one filesystem. For backup systems this is a killer feature. Veeam rolling up incremental backups into the last full happens in seconds because pointers to blocks are juggled around rather than the data blocks themselves.

xfs has been around for a very, very long time. I use it for larger filesystems eg Nextcloud, Zoneminder and the like (and Veeam backup repos that are not object storage). I use ext4 by default.

pfSense boxes - zfs because the alternative is ufs.

RPi - OverlayFS (with ext4 and tmpfs) gets you a generally read only filesystem with changes held in RAM. Ideal for kiosks, appliances and keeping memory sticks alive.

Windows - NTFS, it works well and has streams and there aren’t many other options (ReFS is a bit new but it does have reflinks)

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.

skullgiver ,
@skullgiver@popplesburger.hilciferous.nl avatar

BTRFS on Linux (including the SD card in my Steam Deck, dunno what the root storage on that uses). NTFS on Windows (BTRFS driver for Windows isn’t quite as stable as I’d like it to be). ZFS on a NAS because that’s how it came set up and so far the zRAID hasn’t failed me yet. FAT32 for UEFI boot partitions and recovery USB drives.

XFS at work because apparently ext4 isn’t “mature enough”. Not by choice.

No idea what Android uses, probably ext4 with some software on top?

rem26_art ,
@rem26_art@fedia.io avatar

I've got Btrfs on my desktop for the OS drive cuz that was what Fedora recommended when I was installing it. It took a bit of effort to get snapshots working properly, but other than that, I've had no issues with it at all over the past year. I've got an exFAT drive and an NTFS drive in there that are kind of leftovers from using Windows. I've been thinking about reformatting the exFAT drive to ext4 or something, since all it really does is store games, and having the ability to symlink to it would be nice.

I've got a TrueNAS machine as well and that uses ZFS for pretty much everything.

falkerie71 ,
@falkerie71@sh.itjust.works avatar

Every photocopy machine I’ve come across that accept USB sticks do not support exFAT, so what I would do with my USB stick is to split it into two partitions, one FAT32 and the rest exFAT.

wazzupdog ,

Depends on the device and the use case, mostly FAT32, exFAT, NTFS, EXT4

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