title: Comparing performance of ext4 and NTFS
body: <p>I am doing benchmarking using C of ext4 and NTFS (on RHEL and Windows 7 respectively) as part of a class project.</p>
  
  <p>I am trying to come up with experiments for the benchmarks but am very confused about what should be done and if what I'm thinking makes any sense (my prof is out for 2 weeks and the class has no TA). Here are the details with the questions in bold:</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li><p>Comparing sequential-read speeds: I plan to have a few files of different sizes and performing sequential reads on these with size of each read being a block (4K on both file systems). <strong>Should I do this on files of different sizes or on the same file? Also, does it make sense to read in multiples of the block size?</strong> Of course, for reads beyond the first caching would come into play.</p></li>
  <li><p>Comparing random-read speeds: Run reads (again of the block size) at different file offsets. <strong>Again, same questions as above.</strong></p></li>
  <li><p>Comparing write speeds: Disable write caching on both and write in sizes of a block.</p></li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>My main concern is with respect to the sizes of the files I run my tests on and the size to use for each operation (read/write).</p>
  
  <p>Any other pointers with respect to what I could include in my experiments and any other changes required to my approach would be greatly appreciated.</p>
  
  <p>I also plan to compare metadata operations but I'm working on those and will probably post a question later if needed.</p>