Recently I installed Debian Squeeze, first using ext3
and then again using ext4
on the same machine. The automatic fsck
done after a certain number of mounts is much faster using ext4
(about 1 min) than ext3
(about 5 min).
What are the reasons for this significant difference in speed? If ext4
is much faster why does the Debian installer default to using ext3
?
Best Answer
That's one of the most advertised benefits of ext4 (see it mentioned in the Features on Wikipedia).
The reason? Filesystem developers worked hard to achieve this.
Here's a short summary quoted from Wikipedia: