Re: [gentoo-user] Which filesystem for a notebook?

[Michael Crute]

Personally I would use ext3 and then hdparm to adjust the drive settings so 
that it spins down faster when there is no activity. That should give you 
the best of power saving and data reliability.

-Mike

On 8/8/05, Richard Fish <bigfish@××××××××××.org> wrote:
>
> Volker Armin Hemmann wrote:
>
> >Hi,
> >On Monday 08 August 2005 23:40, Alexander Skwar wrote:
> >
> >
> >>Hello!
> >>
> >>What filesystem(s) do you recommend for use on a notebook?
> >>I'm looking for a FS that's fairly stable even if all of a
> >>sudden the power goes away (battery empty) and one, that
> >>also doesn't (overly) unneccesarily spin up the hard drive.
> >>
> >>I don't think that I'll use Reiser4, as it's lacking an
> >>online fs resizer. At least making the fs bigger should be
> >>doable while the FS is mounted.
> >>
> >>
> >
> >
> >I do not have any direct experience, but from all that I read over the
> years I
> >came to this:
> >
> >XFS is very fragile, when the power is failing.
> >XFS will replace damaged files with zeros
> >
> >this is both not acceptable.
> >
> >Reiser4 is alpha code in motion.
> >I would not touch it with a 10 feet pole at the moment.
> >
> >Well 4 filesystems left ;)
> >
> >
>
> In the last year, I have run XFS, reiserfs v3, and ext3 on my laptop. I
> mostly agree with you, although XFS doesn't really replace entire files
> with zeros, just blocks that have been allocated but not written with
> actual data...so /var/log/messages is likely to get some zeros in the
> event of a bad crash. Files that were not being written at the time of
> the crash are not affected.
>
> Having run them all, my recommendation (and what I run currently) is
> ext3. My soundbite summaries of each are:
>
> XFS: aggressively caches, so might give you some power
> savings...although real-world savings are likely to be slight to none.
> Nice features (the only one that offers a free defragmentation utility,
> even if it is brain-damaged). Cannot be shrunk, only grown.
>
> Reiserfs V3: Excellent performance for _some_operations, slower
> performance for others. Also can only be grown.
>
> Ext3: Best journalling options available, including full-data
> journalling if you want it and do not mind the slowness. Otherwise good
> performance for the opposite operations as reiserfs. Can be grown or
> shrunk.
>
> I do not know of any Linux filesystem that can be resized while still
> mounted.
>
> -Richard
>
> --
> gentoo-user@g.o mailing list
>
>


-- 
________________________________
Michael E. Crute
Software Developer
SoftGroup Development Corporation

"In a world without walls and fences, who needs windows and gates?"