Comparison of file systems - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org

I want to learn more about file systems from the practical point of view so I know what to expect, how to approach them and what experience positive or negative you had / have.

I found this wikipedia’s comparison but I want your hands-on views.

For now my mental list is

  • NTFS - for some reason TVs on USB love these and also Windows + Linux can read and write this
  • Ext4 - solid fs with journaling but Linux specific
  • Btrfs - some modern fs with snapshot capability, Linux specific
  • xfs - servers really like these as they are performant, Linux specific
  • FAT32 - limited but recognizable everywhere
  • exFAT - like FAT32 but less recognizable and less limited
  • ScottE@lemm.ee
    0·
    1 month ago

    ZFS for nearly everything plus ZFSBootMenu EFI on root data pools. Get a bad upgrade? No problem, boot a previous snapshot (auto created with a pacman hook), which I had to do recently when 6.6.39 LTS kernel had a bug. Snapshots are also great when doing things such as upgrading postgres, hass, Plex, etc.

    • Toribor@corndog.socialEnglish
      0·
      1 month ago

      I’ve been using ZFS now for a few years for all my data drives/pools but I haven’t gotten brave enough to boot from it yet. Snapshotting a system drive would be really handy.

  • lnxtx@feddit.nlEnglish
    0·
    1 month ago

    Depends. Slower desktop machines XFS.
    Standard desktop XFS, if it has a smaller SSD, Btrfs.
    Home server ext4/XFS + ZFS. Generic servers at work ext4/XFS, backup/storage servers ZFS.
    Database server, experiment with ZFS with compression enabled - ratio 2:1, but encountered problems (probably a bad HBA model), standard ext4/XFS.
    Hosts with virtualization, small server - XFS, big server - ZFS (technically a ZVOL).

  • n2burns@lemmy.ca
    0·
    1 month ago

    It’s all Ext4, but I run SnapRAID on top of that on my data drives. I’m sure lots of people would tell me I should use ZFS/BTRFS instead, but I’m used to SnapRAID, and I like the idea if something goes wrong, I won’t lose all my data.

  • mindbleach@sh.itjust.works
    0·
    1 month ago

    NTFS for the drive I had before jumping to Mint. Currently reporting several hundred gigabytes free, but refusing to make any new files, because… I don’t know. I’ll deal with it after an upcoming move.

    The OS / home SSD is ext4, and so is the fat loud hard disk I recently purchased through an entire month of fighting Amazon over gift cards.

  • Matriks404@lemmy.world
    0·
    1 month ago

    • Btrfs on my laptop with openSUSE, mainly because it’s default, but also for its snapshot capabilities.

    • Whatever file system my default Raspberry Pi installation uses (probably Ext4).

    • NTFS on my main computer With Windows 10, because… well… I don’t really have any other choice, although I know there’s some kind of 3rd party Btrfs driver for Windows as well and you can ever have boot partition formatted as Btrfs, but I think it’s still experimental.

  • Count Regal Inkwell@pawb.social
    0·
    1 month ago

    Btrfs main boot drive

    Xfs main storage drive

    exFAT external “archive” drive (easy to connect to Windows machines if ever I need my backup in someone else’s windows machine in an emergency and such)

    • Psyhackological@lemmy.mlOP
      0·
      1 month ago

      So you went for exFAT when you want to throw some data onto external drive? I think you could also got away with NTFS in your case.

      • Count Regal Inkwell@pawb.social
        0·
        1 month ago

        Idk, exFAT is meant to be compatible with more stuff than NTFS. If I ever decide to hook this HDD up to a console or smartTV to play the videos I have on it, it is guaranteed to work.

  • ghjones@beehaw.org
    0·
    1 month ago

    A combination of XFS and ZFS. I work in high performance computing (academic). While I love the reliability of ZFS for data archival and peace of mind that results provably haven’t suffered bitrot, sometimes I just need a 10 TB temp file(s) with fast mostly-sequential R/W. Appropriate selection of file systems lets me have both.

    • ghjones@beehaw.org
      0·
      1 month ago

      As an aside, I’ve been watching bcachefs with some interest, as it seems to be getting faster with every kernel release, building on the data integrity guarantees of ZFS while pushing performance boundaries and being GPL compatible (i.e. in tree). Kent Overstreet et al. have done a fantastic job with this FS.

  • The Doctor@beehaw.orgEnglish
    0·
    1 month ago

    Servers - btrfs. Fewer layers of abstraction, easier to manipulate.

    Laptops - ext4. I don’t do anything weird with the onboard storage, plus it supports fscrypt.

    Flash drives - exFAT. I usually need to access them on multiple platforms and exFAT is about as cross-platform as VFAT (but supports bigger files).