Great Filesystem Shoot-out

[plug.org at 2nerds.com]

On Fri, 2 Sep 2005, Grant Robinson wrote:
> Ok, here is something fun to demonstrate file system performance.

On my Linux machine, this is little more than a CPU/memory test.  The test 
runs almost entirely out of cache and barely touches the disk.

Interestingly, on ext2, the test grows the containing directory to 122880 
bytes.  On Reiser, the containing directory reduces back to 88 bytes after 
the test is complete.

Machine 1:
 OS: Linux 2.4.27-2-686-smp
 CPUs: Dual Opteron 246 (2.0 GHz)
 Disk: irrelevant--the test runs in cache
 ext2:   4.280051 (first run)
 ext2:   3.469433 (runs 2+ after directory is expanded)
 Reiser: 2.433232 (fs is mounted with "noatime" option; I don't know
                   if thatt makes any difference)

Machine 2:
 Mac OS X 10.4.2
 HFS+ w/Journaling (I think)
 Mac mini 1.42GHz, no idea on disk interface specs
 29.601413

Chris