OK, this topic I relay need to get in on. I have spent the last few week bench marking my new 1.2TB, 6 disk, RAID6 array. I wanted real numbers, not "This FS is faster because..." I have moved over 100TB of data on my new array running the bench mark testing. I have yet to have any major problems with ReiserFS, EXT2/3, JFS, or XFS. I have done extensive testing on all, including just trying to break the file system with billions of 1k files, or a 1TB file. Was able to cause some problems with EXT3 and RiserFS with the 1KB and 1TB tests, respectively. but both were fixed with a fsck. My basic test is to move all data from my old server to my new server (whitequeen2) and clock the transfer time. Whitequeen2 has very little storage. The NAS's 1.2TB of storage is attached via iSCSI and a cross over cable to the back of whitequeen2. The data is 100GB of user's files(1KB~2MB), 50GB of MP3's (1MB~5MB) and the rest is movies and system backups 600MB~2GB. Here is a copy of my current data sheet, including specs on the servers and copy times, my numbers are not perfect, but they should give you a clue about speeds... XFS wins. The computer: whitequeen2 AMD Athlon64 3200 (2.0GHz) 1GB Corsair DDR 400 (2X 512MB's running in dual DDR mode) Foxconn 6150K8MA-8EKRS motherboard Off brand case/power supply 2X os disks, software raid array, RAID 1, Maxtor 51369U3, FW DA620CQ0 Intel pro/1000 NIC CentOS 4.3 X86_64 2.6.9 Main app server, Apache, Samba, NFS, NIS The computer: nas AMD Athlon64 3000 (1.8GHz) 256MB Corsair DDR 400 (2X 128MB's running in dual DDR mode) Foxconn 6150K8MA-8EKRS motherboard Off brand case/power supply and drive cages 2X os disks, software raid array, RAID 1, Maxtor 51369U3, FW DA620CQ0 6X software raid array, RAID 6, Maxtor 7V300F0, FW VA111900 Gentoo linux. X86_64 2.6.16-gentoo-r9 System built very lite, only built as an iSCSI based NAS. NFS mount from whitequeen (old server) goes to /mnt/tmp Target iSCSI to NAS, or when running on local NAS, is /data Raw dump /dev/null (Speed mark, how fast is the old whitequeen, Read test) Config=APP+NFS-->/dev/null [root@whitequeen2 tmp]# time tar cf - . | cat - > /dev/null real 216m30.621s user 1m24.222s sys 15m20.031s 3.6 hours @ 105371M/hour or 1756M/min or *29.27M/sec* XFS Config=APP+NFS-->NAS+iSCSI RAID6 64K chunk [root@whitequeen2 tmp]# time tar cf - . | (cd /data ; tar xf - ) real 323m9.990s user 1m28.556s sys 31m6.405s /dev/sdb1 1.1T 371G 748G 34% /data 5.399 hours @ 70,260M/hour or 1171M/min or 19.52M/sec Pass 2 of XFS (are my number repeatable? Yes) real 320m11.615s user 1m26.997s sys 31m11.987s XFS (Direct NFS connection, no app server, max "real world" speed of my array?) Config=NAS+NFS RAID6 64K chunk nas tmp # time tar cf - . | (cd /data ; tar xf - ) real 241m8.698s user 1m2.760s sys 25m9.770s /dev/md/0 1.1T 371G 748G 34% /data 4.417 hours @ 85,880M/hour or 1.431M/min or *23.86M/sec* EXT3 Config=APP+NFS-->NAS+iSCSI RAID6 64K chunk [root@whitequeen2 tmp]# time tar cf - . | (cd /data ; tar xf - ) real 371m29.802s user 1m28.492s sys 46m48.947s /dev/sdb1 1.1T 371G 674G 36% /data 6.192 hours @ 61,262M/hour or 1021M/min or 17.02M/sec EXT2 Config=APP+NFS-->NAS+iSCSI RAID6 64K chunk [root@whitequeen2 tmp]# time tar cf - . | ( cd /data/ ; tar xf - ) real 401m48.702s user 1m25.599s sys 30m22.620s /dev/sdb1 1.1T 371G 674G 36% /data 6.692 hours @ 56,684M/hour or 945M/min or 15.75M/sec JFS Config=APP+NFS-->NAS+iSCSI RAID6 64K chunk [root@whitequeen2 tmp]# time tar cf - . | (cd /data ; tar xf - ) real 337m52.125s user 1m26.526s sys 32m33.983s /dev/sdb1 1.1T 371G 748G 34% /data 5.625 hours @ 67,438M/hour or 1124M/min or 18.73M/sec ReiserFS Config=APP+NFS-->NAS+iSCSI RAID6 64K chunk [root@whitequeen2 tmp]# time tar cf - . | (cd /data ; tar xf - ) real 334m33.615s user 1m31.098s sys 48m41.193s /dev/sdb1 1.1T 371G 748G 34% /data 5.572 hours @ 68,078M/hour or 1135M/min or 18.91M/sec Word count [root@whitequeen2 tmp]# ls | wc 66612 301527 5237755 Actule size = 379,336M - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-raid" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html