Re: Which FS to use ?

[Willem.Smit@sanlam.co.za]

   Willem.Smit@sanlam.co.za wrote:

   >Hey guys (are there any girls on this list - hmm)
   >Which filesystem would you recommend for a biggish (10 gig) partition ?
   At
   >the moment I'm using Ext2fs and I really have to use something else,
   it's
   >just way to slow. So should i use Reiser or Ext3fs ? Or is there maybe
   >another fs I can use ?
   In what areas of use does the Ext2 FS on your 10GB drive seem "way to
   slow"?

   When a file transfer starts my cpu jumps to 100% and my pc almost
   freezes up
   for a while before i can work again. It's horribly slow on read and
   write requests.
   While playing a movie and working on a xterm the cursor stops responding
   every now
   and then.

   Transferring a file from one folder to another?

   yes

   With only one disk you're copying from disk, to MB and writing back to
   the same disk - not the speediest of disk operations normally. It would
   help to know if this partition contains all of Debian or if it is just
   one mount like /home and if the rest of Debian is on the same disk or
   another disk

   All of debian on 1 partition - I know this is not recommended, but I'm
   not
   in the mood to create a bunch of partitions and try and manage that.

   Reading files off the disk?

   yes

   Linux nicely pre-fetches data beyond your read request anticipating that

   you are going to need that data, thus speeding disk reads by reducing
   the need to move the head around. Severely fragmented files may not have

   their data within that read-ahead section and miss out on that potential

   performance gain.

   I though ext2fs didn't fragment ? Seems like some of the linux-boys here
   at work don't know what they're talking about ;-).

   Files that are always appended to (like some tar
   files, directories that keep getting new entries, or system logs) are
   very likely to fragment. Files that are re-written get a clean slate and

   are not fragmented. Once the kernel reads something it keeps it in
   memory if possible since that is much faster. If you don't have much
   free memory, you are missing out on that gain as well.

   I've got 800 MB's of ram so i think it's not a memory problem

   I don't know if
   the Resier FS handles fragmentation of appended files better, but any
   file system will appear to work faster on cached data if you have oodles

   of memory.

   Some other situation?
   Maybe the disk/controller isn't using DMA? What type of disk is it?

   It's a seagate Baracuda 80 gig, so it does use DMA. Are there any
   specific drivers
   I should load for DMA to work properly ?

   I haven't used much of anything outside of ext*, so I can't give an
   experiance based comment on Reiser. It's suppose to be pretty fast and
   good at handling lots of small files and directories.

   Can you define small file for me ? Small as in < 5k / < 10 k
   ?
   The place where ext3 orders of magnitude faster than ext2 is when you
   boot up after an improper shutdown/unmount. ext3 (which is basically
   ext2 with journaling) can safely skip fsck for the most part. Ext2 you
   get to sit there watching the file systems scan away. The bigger your
   hard disk, the longer you'll sit and the faster ext3 would seem. :) In
   other cases, because ext3 is writing it's journal to a disk every few
   seconds, it could be a little slower. Since most systems aren't normally

   under intense I/O, this is usually unnoticable. You do have the option
   of storing the journal to a different disk.

   So what you're saying is that I'm actually using the faster filesystem ?
   (Barring disk checking now - which doesn't really matter anyway, it's
   not like that happens every day)

   From what I've read I'm beginning to think I've got some driver problem.

   Ok, I've hit the end of any helpfull thought on the subject, now for
   some related ponderings:

   You've been very helpfull thanx dude.

   Jacob

   Sorry for the bold italics, but I was getting sick of indenting with >
   line by line. Lotus Notes is probably the most stupid email clients
   around when it comes to that


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