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It looks like ext4 supports filesystems up to 1EB (=1024PB; 1PB=1024TB), and single files up to 16TB because it supports 48-bit address mapping. (64-bit mapping is on the way, but who has more than 1024 petabytes of storage?) That being said, the ext2fsprogs developers have only implemented filesystems of up to 16TB, as noted above. So, as a filesystem, ext4 can make things (practically) as big as you want, but the programs that let you make an ext4 filesystem are a bit unfinished, and limit its capabilities.
Distribution: Debian Sid AMD64, Raspbian Wheezy, various VMs
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Originally Posted by DaneM
It looks like ext4 supports filesystems up to 1EB (=1024PB; 1PB=1024TB), and single files up to 16TB because it supports 48-bit address mapping. (64-bit mapping is on the way, but who has more than 1024 petabytes of storage?) That being said, the ext2fsprogs developers have only implemented filesystems of up to 16TB, as noted above. So, as a filesystem, ext4 can make things (practically) as big as you want, but the programs that let you make an ext4 filesystem are a bit unfinished, and limit its capabilities.
It seems that the tools (on 32 bit systems at least, google results didn't confirm whether 64 bit systems were ever affected) didn't support anything over 16TB until fairly recently, at least in Debian (and other) Stable terms. The problem being with 32bits times 4096 blocks only being 16TB instead of the 64bits times 4096 block size that the file system itself supported.
It is funny how often these things happen where the supposed limit turns out not to be the actual limit due to some design decision or another.
Either way, the filesystem got recreated. 64 bit Ext4 has a limit of 1Eib.. I do think the 32 bit limits are written into the on-disk format which would require recreation to overcome.
xfs is recommended for larger filesystems.
If btrfs ever gets the bugs out, I think it would be a better choice as it has better error detection and recovery.
At present, XFS appears best. (though a raid0 would be rather fragile - failure of any disk will destroy the filesystem).
i very recently read --somewhere-- that ext3 is EOL, but ext4 will continue to support it.
not entirely sure how that will work out, does it mean i can still format to ext3 via ext4?
in any case, when i started using linux 4years ago, ext4 was a bit of a gamble, but nowadays it's just standard, imho.
Ext2,3 and 4 are all essentially the same filesystem with different features enabled. Even if a specific ext3 filesystem driver may disappear, the ext4 filesystem driver will still cope with mounting and organising ext 2 and ext 3 filesystems. ext3 isn't going anywhere.
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