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When I installed Slack I used the reiserfs filesytem because it seemed to have the best qualities for a home user like me. Was it the right choice? What exactly are the differences between the different Linux filesystems? Can someone give me some examples on how/when each of the file systems would be used? Thanks in advance!
ext2 == one of the older nix based filesystems. Stable, and tried and proven, but rather slow due to it's age. It does not have journaling support (where your data is saved in case of a crash)
ext3 == ext2 + journaling support
reiserfs == A new method of filesystem for nix that takes advantage of recognizing and reading things in a 'tree' like way. Thus it handles small files (mp3 songs, text files, etc) incredibly fast, and a noticible increase on larger files (movies, iso's, etc). It does have journaling support, but does not have the proven record of stability ext2 and 3 has, mostly because it is not as old as the other two. However, I've never had a problem with reiserfs and have seen very very few occurances of it ever giving anyone a problem.
Worth it :)
This site should answer any questions you have about it
http://www.linux-mag.com/2002-10/jfs_01.html
Thanks for the answers! I get it, lol. Reiserfs can stay fast because it does 1K blocks which help keep all of the over lapping to occur. If Linux is like this how do the filesystems under MS work? Havethey dealt with the whole fragmentation thing more in their newer operating systems? What size blocks does FAT32 use? I am interested because I run Win 98Se, is there anyway to change the filesystem in Windows to a more efficient one? I lover this! I have learned so much in the past 2 days it makes my head spin. :)
You are stuck with FAT32 with windows 98!
If you upgrade to XP you get the choice of FAT32 or NTFS
Im not sure about ME though, I would imagine that it uses FAT32 but im not sure about that, maybe someone can tell me different?
The main differences are:
NTFS: (New technology file system)
Is more secure; it allows you to assign access rights to your files and directories, which obviously enables you to say who can veiw what on your computer
It supports larger hard drives, up to something like 2 TBs.
You can reserve space for specific files
It can automitically encrypt and decrypt files "on the fly"
You can index the files to speed up file searching
Can compress file a lot better
There are a hell of a lot more advantages with NTFS but i feel these are the main ones!
FAT32: (File Allocation Table 32Bit)
Is a lot more reliable for dual boot sytems, especially if you are using say 98 + XP, you will have to use fat32 as 98 cant access a NTFS file system without using 3rd party software
Is limited to a maximum cluster size of less than 64KB (it cant be 64kb or larger)
Is less secure
FDISK has a lot of problems with drives bigger than 64KB under the FAT32 system
Again these are more pro's and con's to FAT32 but these are the important one IMHO.
Hope it helped
Under XP, if you format your partition with NTFS, you have an option of setting the block size. The block size can be any one of 512 bytes, 1024 (1K) bytes, 2048 (2K) bytes or 4096 (4K) bytes. NTFS isn't as prone to segmentation as FAT32 is. However, both are more prone to fragmentation than EXT2, EXT3 or ReiserFS. Because of it's block size, ReiserFS also makes the most efficient use of disk space.
Cheers,
cgkanchi