I would like to get inputs on the best file system to use on a USB flash disk that will be mainly used for daily backups. These will be incremental.

It seems to work OK using ext2, but it is slower than I expected when the total updated files are small (less than a megabyte). The USB stick blinks for 10 seconds or so. The write speed is supposedly 10 MB/sec.

I wonder if ext2 has some fixed overhead or some other issue like journaling all file changes or duplicating directory records or whatever. Is there a Linux file system that is simple (like FAT32) and would have minimal update overhead? FAT32 is no good for me because many Linux files names with strange characters (e.g. ':') are invalid for FAT32.

thanks

Here is a guy who took the time to bench mark filesystems. It seems like he does this every two years. I found one for 2004 and another in 2006. Looks like we'll wait a little while for the '08 one.

http://linuxgazette.net/122/TWDT.html#piszcz

Regards,

Brandon

edit: The second one he did garnered some recognition from /. Read some of the posts by Slashdot readers, they all make some good points to take into consideration.

http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl.../01/06/1539235

Are you sure the USB stick is plugged into an USB 2.0 port? I have seen horrible data rates with USB sticks when plugged into USB 1.1 ports.

You want to make sure your device is plugged into a USB bus that says USB2 (or equivalent) when you run "lspci". For example

# lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 82845 845 (Brookdale) Chipset Host Bridge (rev 11)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82845 845 (Brookdale) Chipset AGP Bridge (rev 11)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 01)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 01)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 01)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-M) USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 01)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 PCI Bridge (rev 81)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL (ICH4/ICH4-L) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 01)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801DB (ICH4) IDE Controller (rev 01)
...


I see that my USB 2.0 interface is an Intel EHCI controller. If I run "dmesg | less" and search for EHCI

ehci_hcd 0000:00:1d.7: EHCI Host Controller
ehci_hcd 0000:00:1d.7: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 1
ehci_hcd 0000:00:1d.7: debug port 1
PCI: cache line size of 128 is not supported by device 0000:00:1d.7
ehci_hcd 0000:00:1d.7: irq 193, io mem 0xe3000000
ehci_hcd 0000:00:1d.7: USB 2.0 started, EHCI 1.00, driver 10 Dec 2004


I find that my USB 2.0 controller has been assigned bus number 1. When I run "lsusb"

# lsusb
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 13b1:000d
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 0000:0000


I see that my wireless USB device is using bus number 1, and therefore is connected to a USB 2.0 port.