With Linux 2.6.32, Btrfs Gains As EXT4 Recedes

With our infamous SQLite test profile, EXT3 was by far the fastest file-system while XFS came in second and just behind that was EXT4 in third. Then came ReiserFS and in a distant last place was Btrfs, which was 13x slower than EXT3 and 2.7x slower than EXT4.

EXT4 pulled a first place finish with PostMark where it was in front of EXT3 by about 40%. The slowest Linux file-system for this program that measures the disk performance in a simulated mail benchmark was XFS. Btrfs had performed in front of ReiserFS, which put it in a modest third place for this experimental file-system.

Turning to a set of Threaded I/O Tester results we had looked at the write, random write, read, and random read performance with this test profile when using 32 threads of 128MB files. EXT3 was the fastest file-system for the writes with a speed of 157MB/s while EXT4 was behind at 136MB/s. Btrfs was in a third place for its write performance at 56MB/s with XFS coming in at 43MB/s and ReiserFS struggling at just 26MB/s.