The executive summary in my own words of which filesystem to pick if you’re wondering which is best. I’m avoiding jargon or anything overly technical. I also provide some made-up* graphs to help with quick decision making.

Overview

• Ext2 – Old. Don’t bother.
• Ext3 – Lacking in performance though very solid and reliable with a huge number of tools to fiddle with.
• Ext4 – More reliability and a little extra speed over ext3.
• XFS – Sci-fi name and also very fast but lacks the same level of error protection as some others. Undelete is almost impossible. Doesn’t like powercuts.
• JFS – Like XFS but more reliable after a powercut. Very fast and low CPU usage making it ideal for old PCs and new alike.
• ReiserFS – Was good, but showing its age and no longer actively developed.

What do you want?

Speed

1. XFS
2. JFS
3. ReiserFS
4. ext4
5. ext3
6. ext2

Reliability

1. ext3
2. ext4
3. JFS
4. ReiserFS
5. ext2
6. XFS

Epic Graphs

* when I say made-up I mean that. They’re from my own experiences and reading various contradictary benchmarks. There are so many contradictions on speed and reliability out there that I think a rough guide is just as good as any of the other meticulously biased graphs out there. They can be argued as innacurate. But this is my blog – my goddamn rules! If I want pretty graphs I will HAVE pretty graphs!