BTW,hard facts here:
I timed my partitions with "hdparm -tT". My results, to satisfy those who wanna know differences...
My drive -
/dev/hda1 - ntfs
/dev/hda5 - ext2 (small /boot - too small to bench)
/dev/hda6 - swap
/dev/hda7 - reiser4
/dev/hda8 - xfs
/dev/hda9 - fat32
machine: AMD Duron 800/384mb/ata100 controller onboard/80 wire cable/Maxtor DiamondMax8 (2mb cache). Here are the speeds -
Code:
sparky ~ # hdparm -tT /dev/hda1
/dev/hda1:
Timing cached reads: 744 MB in 2.01 seconds = 370.94 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 80 MB in 3.12 seconds = 25.61 MB/sec
sparky ~ # hdparm -tT /dev/hda2
/dev/hda2:
read(2097152) returned 1024 bytes
Timing buffered disk reads: read() hit EOF - device too small
sparky ~ # hdparm -tT /dev/hda3
/dev/hda3: No such file or directory
sparky ~ # hdparm -tT /dev/hda4
/dev/hda4: No such file or directory
sparky ~ # hdparm -tT /dev/hda5
/dev/hda5:
Timing cached reads: 736 MB in 2.01 seconds = 366.77 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: read(2097152) returned 1278464 bytes
sparky ~ # hdparm -tT /dev/hda6
/dev/hda6:
Timing cached reads: 744 MB in 2.01 seconds = 370.21 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 126 MB in 3.01 seconds = 41.92 MB/sec
sparky ~ # hdparm -tT /dev/hda7
/dev/hda7:
Timing cached reads: 748 MB in 2.01 seconds = 372.57 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 142 MB in 3.04 seconds = 46.64 MB/sec
sparky ~ # hdparm -tT /dev/hda8
/dev/hda8:
Timing cached reads: 740 MB in 2.00 seconds = 369.32 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 116 MB in 3.01 seconds = 38.48 MB/sec
sparky ~ # hdparm -tT /dev/hda9
/dev/hda9:
Timing cached reads: 740 MB in 2.01 seconds = 368.40 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 118 MB in 3.05 seconds = 38.68 MB/sec
conclusion?my swap (no fs) and the reiser4 are tops. Reiser4 is fastest fs on the disk. xfs trails and is around the same as fat32. ntfs (that would be version 5 on winxp) is dead last. Ignore /dev/hda2, 3 and 4,as they are just the extended partition place markers (yes, I partitioned with only 2 primaries by accident - it happens to everyone).
If anyone has a similar machine spec and wants to add a value for reiser 3.6 and ext3, we'd be fairly complete (don't know anyone using jfs). BTW kernel is Gentoo 2.6.8.1-r6 with -ck patch, compiled with USE flags for the athlon/duron/k7 processor, FYI.