LinuxWorld.com: Reiserfs or ext3: Which journaling filesystem is right for you?

[ Thanks to Jason Greenwood for this link. ]

"I just converted VarLinux.org from using the Reiserfs filesystem to the ext3 journaling filesystem. I'm a big fan of Reiserfs, and I haven't changed my opinion of the filesystem. I simply want to kick the tires on ext3 and take it around the block a few times to see what there is to like or dislike.

There are many technical differences between the two filesystems, but there are only three differences that most people should care about. First, you can do an in-place conversion from ext2, which until recently was the default filesystem for most Linux distributions. Second, you can set ext3 to journal data as well as metadata. Today, Reiserfs journals metadata only.

Let's look at these first two differences before we get to the third, because the third deserves special attention.

The in-place conversion of ext2 systems is a nice win for ext3. It obviously wasn't useful in my case since my system was built on Reiserfs, but I can see where a lot of users won't even think about trying any other journaling filesystem besides ext3, simply because it's easier to move from ext2 to ext3 than from ext2 to any other filesystem."

Complete Story

Related Stories:

• IBM developerWorks: Journaling capabilities of ext3(Nov 16, 2001)
• Red Hat: White Paper: Red Hat's New Journaling File System: ext3 (Oct 31, 2001)
• OSNews.com: Interview With the People Behind JFS, ReiserFS & XFS(Aug 29, 2001)
• MachineOfTheMonth: Migrating to ReiserFS from ext2(Aug 25, 2001)
• LinuxPlanet: ext3 or ReiserFS? Hans Reiser Says Red Hat's Move Is Understandable(Aug 24, 2001)
• MachineOfTheMonth: Installing ReiserFS on a second hard drive(Aug 12, 2001)
• Linux Gazette: Journaling Filesystems for Linux(Jul 02, 2001)
• BULMA: Ext2, ReiserFS and XFS Benchmarks(May 24, 2001)
• LinuxPlanet: An In-Depth Look at Reiserfs(Jan 22, 2001)