[LAU] Best file system for audio?

[Gabriel M. Beddingfield]

On Tuesday, June 28, 2011 06:49:24 pm Christopher Cherrett 
wrote:
> >   - For hard disk recording... use a NON-journaling
> >   
> >     file system like ext2.  (E.g. mounted as
> >     /tmp or something.)  This removes the overhead
> >     of updating the journal for each transaction
> >     to the disk.  If you have a power failure during
> >     a recording, you're pretty fsck'd no matter which
> >     way you go... so the journal won't help you.
> 
> What type of performance hit does journalized file
> systems take?
> 

Here's the simplified concept of a journaling file system.  
For each chunk of data that will be written to the disk, the 
procedure is something like:

  1. Add a log entry in the journal that you are going
     to replace data at location A with data at
     location B.

  2. Write the data for location B.

  3. Point the file system to location B instead of A.

  4. Delete the log entry from the journal.

While this generally happens pretty fast... chances are that 
the journal, location A, and location B are in 3 totally 
different locations.  That means that the your disk will 
seek each time.  This lowers your throughput/bandwidth.

When recording (i.e. large, sequential files) on a non-
journaling file system... you simply do step 2.  Over and 
over.  And you don't have to seek.  This improves your write 
performance.  But since you're not journaling, an unexpected 
power outage can result in a total filesystem corruption 
(but it's usually just a localized filesystem corruption).

With that said, I've never had a problem recording on a 
journaling filesystem... but the original question was "what 
is the best?"

> Does a non-journalized file system give you less latency?

No.  It give you more hard drive bandwidth and more CPU 
headroom.

Your hard disk performance has nothing to do with audio 
latency.

-gabriel