Ubuntu 12.04 LTS - Benchmarking All The Linux File-Systems

The initial create process for Compile Bench was the fastest with EXT3/EXT4 followed by XFS. ReiserFS was even faster than Btrfs in this test. EXT4 was about 23% faster than Btrfs.

For the Flexible IO Tester, Btrfs was by far the slowest file-system while EXT4 came in as the fastest. While not as bad as Btrfs, the XFS file-system was also noticeably slower than the rest of the friendly Linux file-system competition.

Overall, the EXT4 file-system performed very well in this latest round of Linux file-system benchmarks. Again, this was testing each file-system as the root file-system upon performing clean installations of Ubuntu 12.04 LTS with its default Linux 3.2-based kernel. These results are also just focused upon a single-disk SSD-based Intel Sandy Bridge system, as common to Linux desktop enthusiasts, where as some of these file-systems and tests are better suited towards multi-disk workstations or traditional hard drives. For what it's worth though, EXT4 was ahead in the majority of the tests. This article also ignores the features of the different file-systems, where as Btrfs is more advanced than EXT4 with its various transparent compression options, copy-on-write snapshots, etc. Stay tuned for more benchmark results, including when testing each of the Btrfs mount options on Ubuntu 12.04.