this post was submitted on 20 Sep 2023
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Linux
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it sucks that bcachefs cannot be run as a dkms as it cannot be run as a module (only built-in)
It is coming in 6.7, I think. What are the advantages of bcachefs over something like ext4 or btrfs?
All the advantages of btrfs + the ability to combine SSDs and HDDs in a way that maximizes speed and space.
Isn't that what I'm already doing with standard bcache + btrfs?
I had bcache + btrfs (RAID1) before this but it was a huge waste of space because bcache had to cache two identical copies of the data in order to be effective (since BTRFS and bcache don't communicate and BTRFS picks from a random disk); that's half as much cache.
With Bcachefs everything is integrated so it knows to cache only one copy in RAID1 (and it doesn't even need to hold two HDD copies, the fast/"cached" copy counts). Data is read from the fastest source and every resource is best utilized.
Nice.
So it's kind of like RAID?
It has RAID modes and it intelligently rearranges data s.t. commonly used files are stored in a fast drive and fetched from there, whereas BTRFS will write to and read from a "random" drive regardless of its speed.
The previous solution of using btrfs raid1 + bcache (not the FS) separately was very wasteful because the cache had to store both/all copies of the data since btrfs picks a random drive to read from.
Does it provide any advantages for home users? I can see how this could be useful in enterprise settings, but does it benefit regular desktop users?
Yes, lots of storage space with redundancy and the speed advantage of an SSD. If you have enough data where a pair of reasonably priced SSDs is not enough then it is highly advantageous to combine them with (cheaper/bigger) HDDs.
Personally I would not consider a filesystem without data redundancy for my personal files, and I have enough pictures to fill some hard drives but I don't like waiting for them to load.