Recommend a filesystem for SSD

zah21 · n00b Joined: 15 Jan 2021 Posts: 27

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.

Ionen · Developer Joined: 06 Dec 2018 Posts: 2852

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 · Advocate Joined: 07 Mar 2007 Posts: 2179

asturm · Developer Joined: 05 Apr 2007 Posts: 9270

ext4. boring fs is best fs.

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Tue Feb 16, 2021 11:01 am Post subject:

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.
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pietinger · Posted: Tue Feb 16, 2021 11:23 am Post subject:

fedeliallalinea · Posted: Tue Feb 16, 2021 11:23 am Post subject:

As asturm say, ext4
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eccerr0r · Posted: Tue Feb 16, 2021 9:21 pm Post subject:

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.
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szatox · Advocate Joined: 27 Aug 2013 Posts: 3430

ext4

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

Goverp · Advocate Joined: 07 Mar 2007 Posts: 2179

Irre · Guru Joined: 09 Nov 2013 Posts: 434 Location: Stockholm

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

eccerr0r · Posted: Wed Feb 17, 2021 3:38 pm Post subject:

msst · Apprentice Joined: 07 Jun 2011 Posts: 259

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 · Apprentice Joined: 21 Aug 2003 Posts: 200 Location: Athens

xfs for all

mustafasalih1993 · n00b Joined: 09 Feb 2021 Posts: 38

I use ext4, always happy with it

Roman_Gruber · Posted: Fri Mar 12, 2021 6:05 pm Post subject:

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_ · Guru Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 448 Location: France

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 · Posted: Sat Mar 13, 2021 10:17 am Post subject:

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.
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xahodo · Posted: Sat Mar 13, 2021 6:45 pm Post subject:

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.

Zucca · Posted: Sat Mar 13, 2021 6:51 pm Post subject:

All-in btrfs here.
The multi-device btrfs setups and one laptop.
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Jojobinha_2009 · Posted: Mon Apr 05, 2021 12:42 am Post subject:

Using BTRFS... noticed Gentoo runs faster with it instead of ext4.
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The_Great_Sephiroth · Posted: Wed Aug 18, 2021 1:45 am Post subject:

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.
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CooSee · Veteran Joined: 20 Nov 2004 Posts: 1468 Location: Earth

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'.
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sitquietly · Posted: Thu Aug 19, 2021 7:58 pm Post subject:

CaptainBlood · Advocate Joined: 24 Jan 2010 Posts: 3858