Suggest which file system to use

[TheR]

I am upgrading my (as I call it) archive server. It is server used for archiving anything from user files, to images, backup data etc... lots of files of different sizes.

It has 8 WD320RE disks in RAID5 for total little above 2T space. Disks were working perfectly good for 4 years. I will be replacing them with 8 WD2000RE disks in RAID-5, somewhere around 12T of usable space.

I am currently using RaiserFS as file system, because it was hip at the time and as turned out once, when I had to copy data to other disk, is about 20% more efficient than ext3. I can save about 20% more data on Raiser.

My question is. What file system do you suggest for using with new configuration considering that space is more valuable than speed.

Thanks
TheR

[Lars Noodén]

Here is one study on the overhead required by file system metadata (http://rwmj.wordpress.com/2009/11/08/filesystem-metadata-overhead/). Ext3, Ext4, and Reiser all look comparable there. JFS and Btrfs use much less overhead. I'd look at btrfs first.