Recommend a filesystem for SSD

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zah21 · Post by **zah21** » Tue Feb 16, 2021 7:08 am

Hi guys,

I'll be upgrading to new laptop pretty soon so at the moment I'm trying to decide what file system to use on an SSD. I've always used Ext4 and I've had no major issues with it so far. From what I've heard elsewhere it seems like filesystems such as btrfs and f2fs seems to have good ssd support, so I'd like to hear your opinion on what you think about those.

Thanks.

Post by **Ionen** » Tue Feb 16, 2021 7:10 am

Hardly matters, use what you prefer based on features or robustness.

Note that F2FS is mostly useful for "dumb" flash storage (like a usb thumbdrive), any remotely modern SSDs don't need this.

Goverp · Post by **Goverp** » Tue Feb 16, 2021 9:19 am

Ionen wrote:...
Note that F2FS is mostly useful for "dumb" flash storage (like a usb thumbdrive), any remotely modern SSDs don't need this.

That's not correct. It was designed for SSD, NVMe and the like by people from Samsung, who make quite a lot of that stuff. It has some issues that can be mitigated (note that if you apply their changes, they need the filesystem formatted with the "extra_attr" flag, which breaks grub's ability to read it).

My experience so over the past year with an F2FS NVMe rootfs is fine. It also supports FSCRYPT, like ext4, which may be of interest for laptop security if you don't want to go down the LUKS route.

Post by **asturm** » Tue Feb 16, 2021 9:21 am

ext4. boring fs is best fs.

Post by **NeddySeagoon** » Tue Feb 16, 2021 11:01 am

zah21,

I use ext4. On some filesystems where I don't mind throwing them away is there is a problem, wint the -O ^has_journal option.

Post by **pietinger** » Tue Feb 16, 2021 11:23 am

asturm wrote:ext4. boring fs is best fs.

+ 1

I am using ext4 on desktop and notebook (both having a SSD as boot medium).

Post by **fedeliallalinea** » Tue Feb 16, 2021 11:23 am

As asturm say, ext4

eccerr0r · Post by **eccerr0r** » Tue Feb 16, 2021 9:21 pm

Especially SATA SSDs are "cooked" interfaces and deal with wear leveling automatically so there's no need to run a flash centric filesystem.

When they start forcing us to use "WinSSS" (aka solid state storage with the "Winmodem" moniker) then perhaps we need to start using f2fs of some sort, and waste CPU cycles/memory to deal with wear leveling and block allocation. But even so, unless you have some sort of power guarantee (battery or at least some capacitor backup) there's a high risk for corruption if you can't finish metadata writes. SATA SSDs will detect power failures and clean up before going dark, something that you can't guarantee with F2FS on solely line power.

szatox · Post by **szatox** » Tue Feb 16, 2021 9:35 pm

ext4

You can pick something more exotic for more exotic purposes, but ext4 is just fine for root.

Goverp · Post by **Goverp** » Wed Feb 17, 2021 9:19 am

eccerr0r wrote:Especially SATA SSDs are "cooked" interfaces and deal with wear leveling automatically so there's no need to run a flash centric filesystem.

When they start forcing us to use "WinSSS" (aka solid state storage with the "Winmodem" moniker) then perhaps we need to start using f2fs of some sort, and waste CPU cycles/memory to deal with wear leveling and block allocation. But even so, unless you have some sort of power guarantee (battery or at least some capacitor backup) there's a high risk for corruption if you can't finish metadata writes. SATA SSDs will detect power failures and clean up before going dark, something that you can't guarantee with F2FS on solely line power.

IIUC F2FS is, like ext4, a journalling filesystem. So presumably after a power failure it's a case of replaying the journal for both ext4 and f2fs.

Irre · Post by **Irre** » Wed Feb 17, 2021 10:51 am

Bad, bad experience with f2fs on my first Raspberries. Even on a Google mobile phone the f2fs got corrupted during an update.

eccerr0r · Post by **eccerr0r** » Wed Feb 17, 2021 3:38 pm

Goverp wrote:IIUC F2FS is, like ext4, a journalling filesystem. So presumably after a power failure it's a case of replaying the journal for both ext4 and f2fs.

Still can't guarantee atomic writes when power is unreliable. Even mechanical hard drives have "last gasp" writes for when power goes out, no guarantees when doing in software.

Granted if you run f2fs on a storage medium that supports reliable writes, then it's not nearly as much of a problem...still redundant...

msst · Post by **msst** » Thu Feb 18, 2021 8:06 pm

I prefer btrfs nowadays. Works without problems and adds transparent compression and lvm / raid type features without needing to add extra layers of complexity.

But of course ext4 is the most common default option for a reason. If you need / want none of the other features, why experiment? SSD support is solid on ext4 as well.

nikolis · Post by **nikolis** » Sat Mar 06, 2021 1:04 am

/ ext4

/var/portage XFS (builds + distfiles)

/home XFS (data, VMs, media)

mustafasalih1993 · Post by **mustafasalih1993** » Sat Mar 06, 2021 3:14 am

I use ext4, always happy with it

Roman_Gruber · Post by **Roman_Gruber** » Fri Mar 12, 2021 6:05 pm

What filesystem do you use?

I use that for ages. It matter more which drive manufactuerer you buy. I had good experience with crucial, and the worst with my ADATA and Sandisk drives.
SATA 2.5" -> GPT -> LVM2 -> LUKS -> ext4

You want to use something which can be easily recovered and has no big performance impact.

Tom_ · Post by **Tom_** » Sat Mar 13, 2021 8:01 am

I just bought new SSDs and i was wondering about which filesystem to use. I thought about BTRFS but in the end I suppose that I'll stick to the trusty lvm2 + ext4 combo.

Anon-E-moose · Post by **Anon-E-moose** » Sat Mar 13, 2021 10:17 am

Mix of things here.

Mostly btrfs (now), 2 mirrored raid boxes are btrfs now, but about a year ago they were reiser3.
Except for one of my samsung ssd's (old root pre nvme) that I used ext4 for and the reason for ext4 is that the ext* systems seem to be faster for serving qemu images.

xahodo · Post by **xahodo** » Sat Mar 13, 2021 6:45 pm

ext4 all the way. I had reiserfs for /home and /var for a while, to reduce space consumption by smaller files, but I'm a bit hesitant to use it these days as I'm not sure about its maintenance and development status.

Website · Post by **Zucca** » Sat Mar 13, 2021 6:51 pm

All-in btrfs here.
The multi-device btrfs setups and one laptop.

Jojobinha_2009 · Post by **Jojobinha_2009** » Mon Apr 05, 2021 12:42 am

Using BTRFS... noticed Gentoo runs faster with it instead of ext4.

The_Great_Sephiroth · Post by **The_Great_Sephiroth** » Wed Aug 18, 2021 1:45 am

BTRFS on mechanical. It is faster and has bit-rot protection which HAS saved me a few times.

I also wanted to vote F2FS because that is all I use on systems with SSDs. It smokes ext4 and BTRFS on an SSD. I mean SMOKES IT HARD.

CooSee · Post by **CooSee** » Wed Aug 18, 2021 2:29 pm

maybe it's just my imagination, but i always found 'ext3/4' to chatty - like reiserfs.

i only use 'xfs' and never disappointed me, even after 'power outage'.

sitquietly · Post by **sitquietly** » Thu Aug 19, 2021 7:58 pm

CooSee wrote:i only use 'xfs' and never disappointed me, even after 'power outage'.

Similar.

I use xfs for root because "xfs never disappointed me, even after power outage" and because I know it has had a lot of work put into it for years now and is preferred by RedHat.

I use zfs for data disks (on enterprise HDs). It has been very reliable giving me many terrabyte*years without a single disappointment. I also like that my zfs raid10 array manages to give me uninterrupted, glitch-free 24bit 96kHz audio playback even during massive rsync transfers and ebuilds on the same array. From Ann-Sophie Mutter to Yo Yo Ma we all love zfs.

boot ssd = xfs
data HDs = zfs

I'm only missing a yfs.

CaptainBlood · Post by **CaptainBlood** » Thu Aug 19, 2021 8:22 pm

asturm wrote:ext4. boring fs is best fs.

Yeah,
Been waiting for years btrfs 5/6 to become boring...