These are a few of many benefits of btrfs:<\/p>\n

\n
• Copy on write insures data integrity<\/li>\n
• Handles up to 16 exbibytes of data (1 million tebibytes)<\/li>\n
• Supports pools and multiple mount points (virtual volumes)<\/li>\n
• Multiple compression and encryption options<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

  The Downside<\/h2>\n

  And here are a few downsides to btrfs:<\/p>\n

  \n
  • Some features are still being implemented<\/li>\n
  • Slightly slower than Ext4<\/li>\n
  • Not yet as feature rich as the more mature OpenZFS, which is also available for Linux<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

    When to use Btrfs<\/h2>\n

    For end users, there’s little reason to switch to Btrfs, as Ext4 is a fine file system with large capacity (1 EiB) and very good performance. However, there’s no reason not to switch either, as you don’t lose a whole lot in the way of speed, and you gain some peace of mind if your data is super sensitive.<\/p>\n

    For NAS, or servers, or larger volumes it’s a no-brainer. And no doubt Linux users will eventually be using it, as Ext4 is likely the last iteration of that venerable file system.<\/p>\n

    This article was amended on 6\/19\/2020 by the author to correct the discussion of file capacity.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Btrfs may be a “better” file system next to everything except ZFS, but what Btr actually stands for is not “better”, or “butter”, but B-Tree, a data construct employed in the design. Now that we’ve straightened that out, what is btrfs and how does it work? What is Btrfs? Btrfs is a next generation file […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":2002,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n