Thread: Ext4!
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9000 is offline 9000
2011-04-10 , 14:38
Posts: 1,425 | Thanked: 983 times | Joined on May 2010 @ Hong Kong
#15
Originally Posted by iDont View Post
I don't completely agree with your post.


Originally Posted by iDont View Post
First things first: as said in the post above yours, the wiki is about reformatting the /home partition, not the big vfat one. Maybe this should be made more clear in the wiki page. The "need" to reformat might be an overstatement, it's more like "want" to reformat. Don't forget that the majority of users don't want to repartition/change FS at all.
I am not commenting the wiki, nor whether there's a need to reformat all partition in N900. It's okay if one wants to format any partition with any fs, as long as they're willingly to take the risk.

I'm just commenting on the suitability of using ext4 fs on flash media. May be I should have stated it explicitly next time before posting.

Originally Posted by iDont View Post
Anyway, judging by my (simple) benchmarks, ext4 is quicker in copying big files too. A more extensive benchmark is to be found here.
Thank you for sharing the links. However, I found that neither of them include vfat in the benchmark, rather I found one here.

Nevertheless, I'm not going to defend for vfat. I've no sentimental attachment toward vfat, I'm glad to know ext4 is better than vfat.

For the performance, we can always do our own benchmark to convince ourself. There's no need to argue on that. Take it easy. ^^

Originally Posted by iDont View Post
As far as I know wear-leveling, at least on the N900 its NAND flash, is not managed by the filesystem so this should be a non-issue.
Again I'm not talking about reformatting NAND, I'm just talking about ext4 on flash media. BTW, NAND in N900 is formatted in UBIFS, which does not work on top block device, but still it's a file-system anyway.

UBI itself is a wear-leveling subsystem but I'm not referring to that in my point. Without wear-leveling, ext4 is not the best choice for flash media. Ext4 does not handle wear-leveling in its original design, but flash manufacturers consider including wear-leveling in hardware so the problem would be solved in the future.

Just for your information.