[arch-general] Adding new partition to system from unpartitioned space - any reason to not use ext4??

[Thomas Bächler]

Am 07.01.2010 18:26, schrieb David C. Rankin:
> Guys,
> 
> 	This is just a quick request to make sure I don't screw myself playing with new technology. I have a server 5 existing ext3 partitions on a dmraid array with several hundred gig of unpartitioned space. I have created the new partition and I'm about the create the filesystem. With ext4 now available, is there any reason I shouldn't go ahead and create the filesystem as ext4? It will simply be another data partition to supplement /home that was created rather small to begin with.
> 
> 	Any thoughts or gotchas on using ext4 instead of ext3 for this??

Delayed allocation might lead to data loss of recently created or
overwritten files in case of power failure or system freeze. The most
common case of overwriting files in badly written programs has been
worked around in ext4, but theoretically it might still happen
(witnessed by a file with size 0 after power loss or otherwise unclean
shutdown). The same is the case for xfs or btrfs though. You can disable
delayed allocation, but that will negate one of the performance
improvements in ext4 compared to ext3.

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