Optimising performance for many small files

[Steve Flynn]

On Sat, Jun 4, 2011 at 6:22 PM, Ioannis Vranos <ioannis.vranos at gmail.com>wrote:

> OS: Ubuntu 10.10 x86.
>
> Filesystem: ext4.
>
> HDDs: Usual magnetic ones (SATA II), ~300 GBs each.
>
> I am experiencing small performance when copying a few thousand small
> files, about 10-20 KBs each. The usual write speed of ~31 MBs/sec,
> drops to ~10 MBs/sec, when copying those small files, from one hard
> disk to another (each with its own ext4 partition).
>
> Is there a way to increase this performance in ext4? Is there any
> other filesystem that performs better for small files? Reliability is
> important.
>
> Using ext4 without a journal will help?
>
>
It will help but I'd not recommend it. I would instead mount the filesystem
with the following options.

noatime     turn of updating of access times.

data=writeback     means that journal updates can be written lazily

You can also add barriers=0 to turn off write barriers - slightly more
dangerous if you have a power outage and probably won't give you a
appreciable boost in performance either.


-- 
Steve

When one person suffers from a delusion it is insanity. When many people
suffer from a delusion it is called religion.
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