ext4 and btrfs

ext4 and btrfs

Posted Oct 19, 2008 21:43 UTC (Sun) by corbet (editor, #1)
In reply to: Linux Foundation End User Summit wrap-up by eru
Parent article: Linux Foundation End User Summit wrap-up

ext4 is an extension of the earlier ext* filesystems. It retains a semilar organization, and it has some of the same advantages and disadvantages. One big gap in ext4, even after all the work, is that it does not do checksumming of data (or metadata).

btrfs does have that checksumming, along with a lot of other features that people have been asking for (snapshots, for example).

The long-term plan is that btrfs will be the "next-generation filesystem" that we'll all be using. But btrfs is new, under heavy development, and does not yet have a stable on-disk format. OTOH ext4 is ready (or nearly ready) now. So think of ext4 as the interim solution which carries us through the next few years until btrfs is ready.

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