Linux Filesystem Format

There are different types of file systems that can accomplish different things, depending on the specific workload of the machine. Common types are:

FS Type	Usecase
ext4	Known for its stability and wide usage
XFS	High performance and scalability
btrfs	Adds features such as snapshots, etc.
tmpfs	In-memory only filesystem

When creating these filesystems we can use mkfs.<fs_type> /dev/sdXN. “

ext4

This is perhaps the most common file system seen in Linux machines. To create an ext4 filesystem use the command:

xfs

XFS is commonly used in enterprise environments where large workloads are required.

In particular, xfs is ideal for intensive read/write operations, since it can manage very large files and volumes.

btrfs

Unlike ext4, btrfs offers features such as snapshots, sub-volumes, and built-in data integrity checks.

With btrfs we can also use the btrfs command itself to see properties and manage the file system.

Example

sudo btrfs filesystem show
>>
Label: none  uuid: 83325285-9a7e-4f4b-ac2a-2798baf58135
	Total devices 1 FS bytes used 392.94GiB
   devid    1 size 930.51GiB used 401.02GiB path /dev/nvme0n1p2

In particular, btrfs also allows for built-in incremental backups; however, the resource utilisation can vary depending on the workload demanded.

tmpfs

This is a memory-only filesystem that isn’t created with mkfs. Rather, we use Linux Mounts to mount this:

sudo mount -t tmpfs -o size=512M tmpfs /mnt/tmp

This uses RAM instead of disk storage, and has limited size as a consequence. However, it is much faster since there are not disk read/writes.