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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
Magister ,
@Magister@lemmy.world avatar

Btrfs in a luks container so it’s encrypted.

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.

nobleshift ,
@nobleshift@lemmy.world avatar

ZFS

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)

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.

Kaeru ,

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

shotgun_crab ,

Btrfs for the compression and snapshots

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.

Diplomjodler3 ,

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

bionicjoey ,

Based

sgibson5150 ,

Random thoughts, no particular order

I think btrfs was the default the last time I installed Bazzite, but I don’t really know anything about it so I switched it to ext4. I understand the snapshot ability is nice with rolling release distros, though.

It’d been ages since I’d used FAT32 for anything until I made a Debian live USB when I was setting up my pi-hole on an old Core2Duo recently. It would only boot on FAT32 for reasons I probably once knew. 😆

NTFS was an improvement over the FATs what with the journaling, security, file streams, etc. I use it wherever I still use Windows (work).

Most of my general purpose USB flash drives use exFAT. I like not having to worry about eject/unmount.

Jesus_666 ,

NTFS feels rock solid if you use only Windows and extremely janky if you dual-boot. Linux currently can’t really fix NTFS volumes and thus won’t mount them if they’re inconsistent.

As it happens, they’re inconsistent all the time. I’ve had an NTFS volume become dirty after booting into Windows and then shutting down. Not a problem for Windows but Linux wouldn’t touch the volume until I’d booted into Windows at least once.

I finally decided to use a storage upgrade to move most drives to Btrfs save for the Windows system volume and a shared data partition that’s now on ExFAT because it’s good enough for it.

thingsiplay ,

Ext4 for everything when possible, because its reliable and proven. I’m looking towards Btrfs for my next system drive, as it is mature now and has good features. But I would use Ext4 for everything else still. For interoperability that doesn’t understand Ext4 it would be NTFS when supported, otherwise fallback to FAT32.

That’s the entirety of my knowledge and what I use when I have to format it myself. :D

henfredemars ,

I respect your reliable and proven comment. I really love the features of BTRFS and that’s why I use it, but I also really care about my data. I have secondary installations that use EXT4 and work very well.

CalcProgrammer1 ,
@CalcProgrammer1@lemmy.ml avatar

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

fossphi ,

Btrfs, for the compression and CoW. I’ve been using it since a couple years. It seems stable for my use. I need to fully wrap my head around how snapshots work, though.

henfredemars ,

You mentioned CoW. I’m really taking advantage of this because I have multiple Wine prefixes that have lots of duplicate data. I want to give every application it’s own prefix, and my underlying file system allows me to duplicate the blocks so the prefixes are basically free where before it’s several hundred megabytes just to make a new prefix.

Shimitar ,

Ext4 on every Linux device.

Ah i dont have any other kind of devices (android on mobile, but there I have no choices on fs)

Why not btrfs? Don’t know, been using what has kept working flawlessly for me for the last 20+ years, no need to replace ext4.

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