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Filesystems (ext3, reiser, xfs, jfs) comparison on Debian Etch (DebianAdministration)

Filesystems (ext3, reiser, xfs, jfs) comparison on Debian Etch (DebianAdministration)

Posted Apr 26, 2006 2:57 UTC (Wed) by gdt (subscriber, #6284)
In reply to: Filesystems (ext3, reiser, xfs, jfs) comparison on Debian Etch (DebianAdministration) by quartz
Parent article: Filesystems (ext3, reiser, xfs, jfs) comparison on Debian Etch (Debian Administration)

What struck me is just how much below the theoretical performance of the drive the transfer rates are. That might be overly optimistic claims by drive manufacturers, or it might hint that there is still a considerable way to go in improving filesystem performance.

It would be very illuminating to also have the result of a "dd" of 700MB from the drive to /dev/null as well as times for reading the 700MB with a filesystem.


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Filesystems (ext3, reiser, xfs, jfs) comparison on Debian Etch (DebianAdministration)

Posted Apr 26, 2006 3:33 UTC (Wed) by hathawsh (guest, #11289) [Link]

In my own informal tests, XFS and JFS can reach over 90% of the theoretical limit. Specifically:

dd if=/dev/zero bs=1048576 of=/dev/sda1 count=650 # 60 MB/s (theoretical limit)
dd if=/dev/zero bs=1048576 of=/media/sda1/bigfile count=650 # 55 MB/s (practical limit)

These are the rates I see regularly with 7200 RPM, 320 GB drives using an Athlon 64 3200+. ReiserFS and Ext3 turned out slower for this purpose, although I don't remember how much slower.

BTW, one crazy idea I've been toying with is using LVM2 as a filesystem for large files. Use each partition as a file. You could control the placement of every file, giving you 99% of the theoretical transfer rate with virtually no CPU usage. It might be great for digital video and PVRs like MythTV.

Filesystems (ext3, reiser, xfs, jfs) comparison on Debian Etch (DebianAdministration)

Posted Apr 26, 2006 14:59 UTC (Wed) by thompsot (guest, #12368) [Link]

     "BTW, one crazy idea I've been toying with is using LVM2 as a   
     filesystem for large files. Use each partition as a file. You could 
     control the placement of every file, giving you 99% of the theoretical 
     transfer rate with virtually no CPU usage. It might be great for 
     digital video and PVRs like MythTV."

Have you tested this idea? Just curious...


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