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I am tired of watching fsck check my filesystem when my eeepc 901 shuts down abruptly due to a crash. I know that with a journaling filesystem, I won't have to wait for a check. However, I am well aware of the poor I/O performance of the SSD, so I can imagine using a journaling filesystem being even more frustrating, since there will be constant writes to the journal?

I will buy a new laptop without such a crummy ssd someday but, is there anything I can do now, on the software side of things?

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What are you on now? ext2/3 are older than ext4, and ext4 was made in the knowledge of ssds. –  tobylane Feb 14 '11 at 17:40
You might also want to read Aligning filesystems to an SSD’s erase block size by Theodore Ts'o (one the men behind ext4). –  Cristian Ciupitu Feb 15 '11 at 1:28
"I am well aware of the poor I/O performance of the SSD" - Are you sure? My SSD is for sure way faster than my (fake) RAID-10. –  maaartinus Feb 15 '11 at 5:14
@tobylane i'm on ext2 –  freedrull Feb 15 '11 at 6:12
@maaartinus This model has a 4gb master ssd, and a 16gb slave. The slave drive is much slower. shinyplastic.com/archives/… –  freedrull Feb 15 '11 at 6:15

3 Answers 3

try with ReiserFS - checking fs is very fast. This is my fs of choice - rock solid

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But will it be constantly writing to the journal? This could be a problem since the ssd is so slow... –  freedrull Feb 14 '11 at 23:46

There are log-structured file systems available, like LogFS and NilFS that may be more performant on your SSD, but I'm unsure of their stability.

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Another filesystem to try is btrFS. According to one of the main developers of ext3 and ext4, ext4 was actually intended more of a gateway between ext3 and btrFS (much like Microsoft's failed Windows ME transition from dos-based to NT-based). btrFS is still not at a "stable" release, but I hear it is very stable.

--EDIT-- By not "stable" but stable, I mean I don't know of any serious problems that would affect someone who uses a system normally. It's still considered a development version, but it's fairly polished.

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