What filesystem is currently best for a single nvme drive with regard to performance read/write as well as stability/no file loss? ext4 seems very old, btrfs is used by RHEL, ZFS seems to be quite good… what do people tend to use nowadays? What is an arch users go-to filesystem?

  • Avid Amoeba@lemmy.ca
    0·
    2 years ago

    Ext4 is probably going to be the fastest. When it comes to reliability, old is good. If you don’t need any of the features Btrfs and ZFS, you’ll reap higher performance using Ext4. Otherwise ZFS is more feature-complete compared to Btrfs, however it’s generally not available as root fs option in OS installers. Ubuntu used to have it as an experimental option but I think that’s gone now. If you know what you’re doing you can use it as a root fs. Personally I’m using Ext4 on LVMRAID on a 2-way NVMe mirror. I might be switching to ZFS on root when I get to rebuild this machine. All my storage is using ZFS.

  • The Zen Cow Says Mu@infosec.pub
    0·
    2 years ago

    For both my home server and desktop I use XFS for root and ZFS (in some variety of raid or mirror) for /home and data storage. Any time I’ve tried btrfs for root (such as default fedora), inevitably it poops the bed. At this point, I stay far away from btrfs.

  • samsy@feddit.de
    0·
    2 years ago

    For what? Client on a laptop or PC? Why not f2fs? On a server just trust good ol ext4 with some flash drive settings.

      • samsy@feddit.de
        0·
        2 years ago

        My current setup is fedora for the last 6 months. I started a live session, installed f2fs and then run the installer with a combination of f2fs + encryption. And it runs flawlessly and faster than any setup before.

  • Dubious_Fart@lemmy.ml
    0·
    2 years ago

    ext4 being old, and still being the main file system most distros use by default, should be enough alone to tell you being old isnt bad.

    it means its battle tested, robust, stable, and safe. Otherwise it wouldnt be old and still be in widespread use.

  • root@aussie.zone
    0·
    2 years ago

    Hi all. Apologies to hijack this thread. Figured it should be OK since it’s also on the topic of file systems.

    Long story short, I need to reinstall Nobara OS and I plan to install Nobara on my smaller SSD drive with btrfs and set my /home folder to my larger nvme. I’m thinking of using ext4 for my /home and have snapshots of the main system stored on the nvme. Looking for a sanity check to see if this is OK or if I should be doing things differently. Thanks.

      • root@aussie.zone
        0·
        2 years ago

        On the contrary, my intention is to make snapshots of the OS (btrfs) and my idea is to store the snapshots on the /home nvme drive (ext4).

        I don’t know if that’s the standard practice or if I’m over complicating things. My SSD is only 240Gb (I think) while my nvme is a 1Tb drive, thus the intention to store snapshots on the nvme. Maybe the 240Gb is sufficient for say a month’s worth of snapshots plus the OS?

        • rocketeer8015@discuss.tchncs.de
          0·
          2 years ago

          No, that’s a very bad idea. BTRFS has deduplication, without that the snapshots would take up way to much space. Also it’s too many writes since ext4 doesn’t use cow and would have to do distinct writes for every snapshot.

          The 240 gb are plenty for a root system without /home and years worth of snapshots on a btrfs volume, only the changes take up space so the amount of snapshots hardly matters.

          For /home either ext4, xfs or btrfs is fine. Personally I only use a single btrfs volume and put certain folders in their own subvolumes so they can have different settings for snapshots(no snapshots for /home, tmp and cache folders).

          • root@aussie.zone
            0·
            2 years ago

            Noted. Thanks for your clear response. I’ll just keep it simple have the OS snapshots on the same partition.

        • Krik@feddit.de
          0·
          2 years ago

          It’s more important to backup your /home than /. /home is where you store your crucial files.

          • root@aussie.zone
            0·
            2 years ago

            Yes, that’s true. Then again, I’m mainly using my PC for gaming and most of what will be in /home will be game installs. I have my photos and music backups in a separate HDD.

            I think at the end of the day, what I’m trying to achieve with the btrfs snapshots is to be able to roll back my OS in case a system update goes wrong, or I did something I shouldn’t have. :p

  • czech@no.faux.moe
    0·
    2 years ago

    I use ext4 for my desktop and zfs for my media server. Ext4 is faster, ZFS is more accurate and less corruptable.