Compressed Filesystem for Linux

Applications Filesystems, Disks and Memory
1

Hi Everybody:

I'm searching a compressed Filesystem for a external disk, what I use for a full, diary and differential Backup.

The performance is not important, I search the best option for compress data, but I want have access to structure disk, with directories and files in the Backup disk.

I'm thinking in SquashFS.
What do you recommend me?

Best Regards,

2

I wonder if zip and its imitators, with it's smart choice of compression, might outperform a compressed FS. I am wondering if somtone has set it up so a zip can be mounted as a file system. Yup: zip\ file\ system\ mount - Google Search

A FS with versioning might make backups simpler -- just lay it down and if it is different, the old one is versioned into the background. I could have swore wiki had a real nice chart of many FS, but this is all I found: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_file_systems But then I looked in see also and found it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison\_of\_file_systems

I always wanted to see a FS where directories are enhanced to allow them to contain small files like an archive, and by extension small directories, so a big empty file tree might physically be one directory node. Files that grow past a threshold get rousted out. I guess zip gets pretty close to that. It recovers space from lightly used pages, like a 4.1 page file using 5 pages, and allows compression transparently. A tree or hash container for directory entries might be nice, too.

1 Like
3

ext3/4 have hashes for big enough directories I believe. Lots of these features can be found in different things, but seldom all together.

4

Mmmm, I can see some FS with transparent compression (I suppose that's what you mean):

  • Btrfs:
    it could be

  • HFS Plus
    Apple, oh no, its the Devil :p!

  • Reiser4
    it could be

  • NSS & NWFS
    Novell, I don't know it's free, but it's not in my Debian repository

  • Fossil
    I have not heard in my life!

  • ZFS
    I had wanted to try it, but it's on Fuse in Debian Repository, I don't know...

I think the options are:
Btrfs, Reiser4 and ZFS (I doubt about it).

What's your opinion??

5

I wonder if you can achieve compressed backup with some sort of hybrid mirror, where files on one side are compressed once quiescent, and on the other side, are left uncompressed. Compression would occur in the background, not at write time.

6

That's the idea

I want a mirror, the backup is differential, diary, and very little (only differences).

But the external disk with a FS compressed, must consume less space than the original data, I think.

7

Sending it over compressed can save time, too. Variations on zip allow the compression locally and the storage remote.

1 Like