If the buffer is unwritten then the underlying block should already return zero for reads. Further, if it is not dirty then we can be sure that there is no data on the folio that might get written back later. Hence we skip zeroing out the folio and underlying block in this case. Suggested-by: Jan Kara <jack@xxxxxxx> Signed-off-by: Ojaswin Mujoo <ojaswin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> --- fs/ext4/inode.c | 4 ++++ 1 file changed, 4 insertions(+) diff --git a/fs/ext4/inode.c b/fs/ext4/inode.c index de8ea8430d30..75a951ffa3cb 100644 --- a/fs/ext4/inode.c +++ b/fs/ext4/inode.c @@ -3659,6 +3659,10 @@ static int __ext4_block_zero_page_range(handle_t *handle, BUFFER_TRACE(bh, "freed: skip"); goto unlock; } + if (buffer_unwritten(bh) && !buffer_dirty(bh)) { + BUFFER_TRACE(bh, "unwritten and non-dirty: skip"); + goto unlock; + } if (!buffer_mapped(bh)) { BUFFER_TRACE(bh, "unmapped"); ext4_get_block(inode, iblock, bh, 0); -- 2.39.3