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stinga wrote: > > Simple question, seems to be a difficult answer. > > I have large video files. > At the moment I am using ext3 and was wondering if there is a better FS > to use. > > One that uses less disk space would be better. ;) File system overheads are small compared to video files, assuming the data is compressed already in some format, there isn't much hope of a big gain here. I'd take; http://www.debian-administration.org/articles/388#comment_127 with a pinch of salt, some filesystems do more upfront to save elsewhere. Although I really like Reiser file systems, the future for them seems a little murky. > Any suggestions. > > Not fussed about journaling, these tend to be write once read many, > only file tends to be hit at anyone time and they sequentially. File systems tend to be important when there is activity - updates to meta data, blocking writes, journals etc. This is what file system benchmarks tend to compare. Which is probably why it is difficult to find a good answer to reading big files. One guy did some CD ISO manipulations. http://www.debian-administration.org/articles/388 If the dominant factor is reading large chunks of files, the main feature you probably want is fast repair, which ironically probably means a (meta-data) journalling file system, in that if a very big file system is improperly shut down you care only that it is repaired quickly and with limited resources, so the box reboots in a sensible time. So avoid ext2/ext3 due to fsck time if that is likely to be a problem. Leaves ReiserFS, XFS, JFS. I heard XFS is memory hungry is an fsck is required, and the benchmark thus imply JFS would be a good choice. Personally I doubt you'd notice any difference between most of them, not least for reading disk, and switching from ext3 unless there is a specific pain won't help. Whilst there might be some mileage in file system choice, probably what is more important is hardware choice, and other configuration of the I/O subsystem. i.e. Are you getting the most out of the hardware (hdparm is your friend). Is Linux caching efficient for the I/O being done, does it read ahead well? What use is this? If personal use I'd say stick with ext3. If you are serving video to a big network, I suspect hardware choice is more crucial, also splitting the data over multiple disks might help. Is there a specific problem you are encountering?
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