[ardour-users] best file system for audio

[Ross Vandegrift]

On Thu, Jan 19, 2006 at 09:52:31AM -0800, Mark Knecht wrote:
> I'd be very careful about reiserfs. There is info out there about the
> journals not working very well, or completely failing, during power
> loss situations. I be very careful about UPS support if you're going
> to try it.

Just a quick reminder that ReiserFS has been around longer and is more
code-stable than any other journalling filesystem on Linux.  If you're
talking about Reiser4, I believe you.  I used ReiserFS (v3) from
when it first had journalling added until ext3 became a standard
installation option for distros.  In fact, I used to maintain installation
scripts for Slackware and ReiserFS because of this issue.  Never had a
problem with audio, and it's ability unlink a kernel tree in like
three seconds is pretty cool.

The major fault of ReiserFS is that there is no dump for it.  This
makes backups a major pain.

> Personally I'd stick with ext3. It's very well known and it's unlikely
> that disk file system performance will be your biggest performance
> issue getting started with Ardour.

Having said my piece to defend what was formerly my favorite
filesystem, I just use ext3 now because it has the same important
benefit (journalling) as ReiserFS and installs out of the box in
Slackware.  Additional effort isn't worth it ::-).

Unless you're doing work at 192kHz, the data stream going to disk
isn't so intense that your filesystem will be a major issue,  Well,
modulo something that causes bad latency (heh, always).

Sometimes, I think people just like micro-optimizing ::-).

-- 
Ross Vandegrift
ross at lug.udel.edu

"The good Christian should beware of mathematicians, and all those who
make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that the mathematicians
have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and to confine
man in the bonds of Hell."
	--St. Augustine, De Genesi ad Litteram, Book II, xviii, 37