How to choose a fast file system on laptop + SSD?

I have a ThinkPad X13 with 1TB SSD. I am thinking about choosing a filesystem.

I am thinking about faster I/O, especially Random Small Size Reading and Writing.

I am choosing between Ext4, XFS and BTRFS, any suggestions?

Thanks!

I am using ext4 and this filesystem is ~3% slower than the raw data transfer rate of the SSD.

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I found this benchmark, although it’s from kernel 5.0 days:

Short answer: it depends. You should get least variance with ext4 or XFS though. Btrfs seems to be all around the place, but it has e.g. snapshots and copy-on-write.

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This benchmark is old, but it is not in a real world use.

See my current benchmark results with Kernel 5.18+ and my dual Nvme SSDs: (Both have Btrfs partition and Ext4 partition)

  • Read benchmark using cat
  • Copy benchmark
  • Copy benchmark: Btrfs has the deduplication ability, Ext4 does not.

Linux Kernel 6.1 in the future:

https://lore.kernel.org/linux-btrfs/cover.1664798047.git.dsterba@suse.com/

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@Zesko This makes me more confident about btrfs, thanks!

How about XFS? It seems to be a more high-performance FS as it provides direct I/O.

I did not test XFS benchmark. I leave it for external HDD backup, it has more features than Ext4.

I don’t think you’ll get penalized for favoring features over speed on an SSD…