ext2, ext3 or reiserfs?

RIgimp75 · 06-13-2003, 02:38 PM

which of these should i use? i'm thinking ext2. but would like other opinions on this..

tangle · 06-13-2003, 02:49 PM

reiserfs! i have it on four PCs and love it. I have had problem with hard reboots and ext2 filesystem.

Rodrin · 06-13-2003, 03:52 PM

Anything but ext2. It has perhaps a very slight (read: negligible) performance advantage over ext3, but the fact that ext3 is journalling is a big advantage over ext2. No more fsck's after a power outage. Personally I would recommend reiserfs at this point. I have been using it for a while, and it seems to work just great. I converted my home desktop to it when I converted to Slack 9 (after testing for a while on other installs), and I have never looked back.

Astro · 06-13-2003, 06:41 PM

Personally I like the ext3 filesystem. I never have problems with it and I run it on 4 machines.

Greg21 · 06-13-2003, 07:04 PM

Is there a way to convert filesystems after install, or must it be done when formatting?
greg

contrasutra · 06-13-2003, 07:34 PM

You can convert ext2 to ext3 non destructivly, but I havent seen a way to do ext3<->reiserfs.

I would recommend ReiserFS as well. Heres why:

Speed. It feels faster on all my machines. I have no benchmarks, but I feel a definite improvement.

Space usage: The file system you use writes data differently, so a 1MB file can take up a different amount of space depending on the file system, and Reiserfs seems to be much more efficient with space. 2GB of reiserFS "stuff" took up 2.4GB on ext3.

J.W. · 06-13-2003, 08:45 PM

Personally I use ext3 and haven't had any trouble with it. I'd stay away from ext2 though.

Side question: is reiserfs supported under non-Slackware distros? I've done a small amount of searching but as of yet don't have a definitive answer. (Maybe I just haven't looked in the right places yet) Along those lines, what are the default formats used by the other popular distros? -- J.W.

contrasutra · 06-13-2003, 08:58 PM

EXT3 seems to be the default for commercial/desktop type distros, while performance distros seem to lean towards Reiser.

Most distros support both though (along with xfs and jfs). Distrowatch.com has what fs's each distro supports in the distro tables.

tangle · 06-13-2003, 09:00 PM

I believe that all popular distros support reiserfs. Red Hat was a little slow to offer it, but I beleive that since version 8.0 they have.

Raziel · 06-14-2003, 11:26 PM

So I'll guess alot of people will vouch that ext3 is better than ext2. I currently use 2 and while i hate the check system after hard reboot it doesnt take too darn long...however heres what i want to know:

can i convert ext2 to ext3 and if i decide i dont like ext3 can i go back to 2?

Muddy · 06-14-2003, 11:33 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by tangle
reiserfs! i have it on four PCs and love it. I have had problem with hard reboots and ext2 filesystem.

I agree Reiserfs is the best by far.

Waldi · 06-16-2003, 06:58 AM

As far as converting from ext2 to ext3 is concerned, there is program ext2fstune (or something similar, I don't remember), which used with proper parameter (all described in man) generates journal file. Next it is necessary to change ext2 to ext3 for our drive in fstab and we are ready. To convert back, deleting journal file and restore previous fstab is enough.

shepper · 06-16-2003, 08:59 AM

A journaled filing system has the system periodically (5 to 10 seconds) write to the hardrive. On a battery driven laptop you have decreased battery life due to frequent HD access with ext3 or reiser. On a desktop system ext3 or reiser is the way to go. Reiser is supposed to be particularly good if you have a large number of small files.

JustSlack · 06-16-2003, 09:27 AM

ReiserFS is my filesystem of choice. No fsck every 35th boot and the data is nice and secure. Take the plunge to ReiserFS...you'll like it!

nuzzy · 06-16-2003, 02:20 PM

ReiserFS is the default for SuSe. I haven't had any problems with it.