Linux 3.13 Kernel HDD File-System Benchmarks

The Christmas benchmarks we have to share on Phoronix today are of testing the XFS, Btrfs, and EXT4 file-systems on the Linux 3.13 development kernel compared to Linux 3.12 from a high-performance hard drive. Earlier this month results were shared on Phoronix that indicated file-systems on a solid-state drive slowing down with this new Linux kernel, but is that also the case for HDDs?

The benchmarks today are our equivalent to the Linux 3.13 SSD file-system tests earlier in the month that showed file-system performance regressions compared to Linux 3.12 stable. The file-systems being tested in this article are EXT4, Btrfs, and XFS. F2FS was left out of the article since the Flash-Friendly File-System isn't meant for HDD usage. The hard drive used for the benchmarking today was a Western Digital VelociRaptor 150GB HDD that spins at 10,000 RPM and 32MB cache. A Linux review on the WD VelociRaptor is forthcoming on Phoronix.

EXT4, XFS, and Btrfs were all tested with their stock mount options from the Linux 3.13 Git kernel this month and compared to the Linux 3.12 kernel. The Linux kernels were obtained from the Ubuntu Kernel Mainline PPA. All benchmarking is handled via the Phoronix Test Suite software.