HOWTO: Tweak your ext3 filesystem for a performance boost

[Ainvar]

Just applied your tweak to my Ubuntu 5.10 install on a Dell Laptop with a 100gig 7200rpm drive. It is a bit quicker.

[GoldBuggie]

Just applied your tweak to my Ubuntu 5.10 install on a Dell Laptop with a 100gig 7200rpm drive. It is a bit quicker.

Nice to hear it

[DDM]

I get the same error message as noted in this thread:

th@ubuntu:~$ sudo tune2fs -o journal_data_writeback /dev/hda1
tune2fs 1.38 (30-Jun-2005)
tune2fs: Bad magic number in super-block while trying to open /dev/hda1
Couldn't find valid filesystem superblock.

Note that this is on a reiserfs partition, hda1 is correct.

I did, however, get this to work on my desktop's ext3 partition, i noticed a huge speed improvement when using apt-get and synaptic, small improvements elsewhere. A straight up $cp stuff/ ~/Desktop/ took exactly the same amount of time, stuff/ had 1400 files and was 240MB.

[autocrosser]

I'm a PPC user & looking at the ppc of grub (yaboot), I don't get the same areas to change for writeback--any ideas?? I included the noatime (which was used in fstab with Yellowdog Linux) & am "slightly" faster

[GoldBuggie]

I'm a PPC user & looking at the ppc of grub (yaboot), I don't get the same areas to change for writeback--any ideas??

Well..just changing your fstab will probably work but to answer your question: change the kernel line.(but this option will then get removed when updating your kernel)

 kernel          /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.12-10-686 root=/dev/hda1 ro quiet splash vga=792 devfs=mount rootflags=data=writeback

[GoldBuggie]

I'm a PPC user & looking at the ppc of grub (yaboot), I don't get the same areas to change for writeback--any ideas??

Well..just changing your fstab will probably work but to answer your question: change the kernel line.(but this option will then get removed when updating your kernel)

 kernel          /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.12-10-686 root=/dev/hda1 ro quiet splash vga=792 devfs=mount rootflags=data=writeback

[dcast]

works great! definate performance boost on my p3 550. Thanks a lot

[GoldBuggie]

works great! definate performance boost on my p3 550. Thanks a lot

Super! Always nice to hear.

[Sionide]

If the /etc/fstab file is for static drives. Where's the equivalent file for hotplug USB drives for example?? I want to make this change to my storage drives, as others have recommended doing.. But they're USB and don't show up in fstab when mounted..

[jackwhite]

Hi,

I'm going to try this on my computer over the weeked. I also have a super old Thinkpad 380ED which I'm fixing up for a friend. I've got Mepis on it, will this work on other distro's too?