Re: [gentoo-user] Which filesystem for a notebook?

[Richard Fish <bigfish@asmallpond.org>]

Volker Armin Hemmann wrote:

>Hi,
>On Monday 08 August 2005 23:40, Alexander Skwar wrote:
>  
>
>>Hello!
>>
>>What filesystem(s) do you recommend for use on a notebook?
>>I'm looking for a FS that's fairly stable even if all of a
>>sudden the power goes away (battery empty) and one, that
>>also doesn't (overly) unneccesarily spin up the hard drive.
>>
>>I don't think that I'll use Reiser4, as it's lacking an
>>online fs resizer. At least making the fs bigger should be
>>doable while the FS is mounted.
>>    
>>
>
>
>I do not have any direct experience, but from all that I read over the years I 
>came to this:
>
>XFS is very fragile, when the power is failing.
>XFS will replace damaged files with zeros
>
>this is both not acceptable.
>
>Reiser4 is alpha code in motion.
>I would not touch it with a 10 feet pole at the moment.
>
>Well 4 filesystems left ;)
>  
>

In the last year, I have run XFS, reiserfs v3, and ext3 on my laptop.  I 
mostly agree with you, although XFS doesn't really replace entire files 
with zeros, just blocks that have been allocated but not written with 
actual data...so /var/log/messages is likely to get some zeros in the 
event of a bad crash.  Files that were not being written at the time of 
the crash are not affected.

Having run them all, my recommendation (and what I run currently) is 
ext3.  My soundbite summaries of each are:

XFS: aggressively caches, so might give you some power 
savings...although real-world savings are likely to be slight to none.  
Nice features (the only one that offers a free defragmentation utility, 
even if it is brain-damaged).  Cannot be shrunk, only grown.

Reiserfs V3: Excellent performance for _some_operations, slower 
performance for others.  Also can only be grown.

Ext3: Best journalling options available, including full-data 
journalling if you want it and do not mind the slowness.  Otherwise good 
performance for the opposite operations as reiserfs.  Can be grown or 
shrunk.

I do not know of any Linux filesystem that can be resized while still 
mounted.

-Richard

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