Ext3 and Ext4: Which file system to install?

[gjoellee]

I have been using Ext4 for several months, never had any problems at all...

[Lisimelis]

I think it is pretty normal to have some stability issues in the first year of ext4. After all its been a long time since a new filesystem. It is not like a linux distro were we want the problems to go away from the first updates. I think in 9.10 the ext4 will be even better and pretty soon will be the default file system.

[ssam]

ext3 has been holding petabytes (maybe more) of data for many years on millions of systems. all the serious bugs have been ironed out.

ext4 has tested by kernel hackers, and developers for about a year. over the past few months the number of people testing it has increased a lot (lots of ubuntu and fedora testers). the big issue of data loss on unclean shutdowns was found (the lead ext4 developer thinks that linux crashes are very rare, but this is less true if you have binary graphics drivers, or unstable hardware, or powercuts (and you dont have a UPS)).

there are now patches in the ubuntu 9.04 kernel (and mainline 2.6.30, and other distros) that fix that particular bug.

it is not impossible for there to be a few more nasty bugs in ext4. they will be found as more people use ext4 in unusual situations.

so if you use ext4, you will probably be fine. but make sure you have a good backup regime.

[Gina]

I installed Jaunty into ext4 partitions during the testing phase but would now like to clean up my hard drive and remove numerous partitions used for testing. However, I have two ext4 partitions at sda17 and sda18 which GParted won't delete and cannot find a mount point for - it thinks these partitions are mounted when they aren't and refuses to delete these partitions and any lower numbered ones. I can reformat lower ones and reuse them but I seem to be stuck with 18 partitions. The two old ext4 partitions add up to about 15GB out of a 500GB drive so the loss of space is not very significant. Just annoying.

I don't want to wipe the entire drive as I have a lot of data on it that would take a long time to restore.

Does anyone have any suggestions how I can get rid of the rogue partitions, please?

[graysky]

I have been using Ext4 for several months, never had any problems at all...

+1

I think it is pretty normal to have some stability issues in the first year of ext4. After all its been a long time since a new filesystem. It is not like a linux distro were we want the problems to go away from the first updates. I think in 9.10 the ext4 will be even better and pretty soon will be the default file system.

Actually, ext4 has been around for longer than 1 year. I can't locate the source on this but believe me, it is *well* tested.

[graysky]

I installed Jaunty into ext4 partitions during the testing phase but would now like to clean up my hard drive and remove numerous partitions used for testing. However, I have two ext4 partitions at sda17 and sda18 which GParted won't delete and cannot find a mount point for - it thinks these partitions are mounted when they aren't and refuses to delete these partitions and any lower numbered ones. I can reformat lower ones and reuse them but I seem to be stuck with 18 partitions. The two old ext4 partitions add up to about 15GB out of a 500GB drive so the loss of space is not very significant. Just annoying.

I don't want to wipe the entire drive as I have a lot of data on it that would take a long time to restore.

Does anyone have any suggestions how I can get rid of the rogue partitions, please?

If the partitions are mounted you won't be able to modify them via gparted. Have you tried booting from the live gparted CD and attempting your maintenance? I offer that because none of your partitions should be mounted by default under the live CD's environment. Plus, you're using the latest version of gparted by doing so which is always a good thing
I haven't seen an example where gparted failed to

[OmegaBLK]

Currently using ext4 for most of my partitions with Jaunty. Got backups. Hopefully I do not run into bug #330824.

*Fingers crossed*

[AbsentHarvest]

This is good information, I was just looking for how to upgrade ext3 to ext4... I think I will wait until further improvements are made. :]

Thanks.

[trot2millah]

I'm planning a new partition with Jaunty and I want to try out using Ext4, would my other partitions (XP, Linux Mint) be at risk of data loss at all? I doubt it, but just don't want to risk anything.

[Gina]

If the partitions are mounted you won't be able to modify them via gparted. Have you tried booting from the live gparted CD and attempting your maintenance? I offer that because none of your partitions should be mounted by default under the live CD's environment. Plus, you're using the latest version of gparted by doing so which is always a good thing
I haven't seen an example where gparted failed to

Thank you for your reply

I have now downloaded the latest stable GParted and burned it to CD-R. Using that I have successfully deleted the ext4 partitions and others I didn't want. I see the Live CD GParted supports ext4 filesystems.

Thank you for the suggestion - got me out of a hole

Don't know why I didn't think of it myself