Web Apps Since 2004.

Is your website boring?  Kick it up a notch.  Encodable apps easily drop into your website to make it modern, fun, and interactive, with features like file uploads, user accounts, paid subscriptions, protected pages, live chat, visitor logging, mailing lists, and more.
All Encodable apps include:
• Easy setup
• Lifetime license
• Free tech support
• Full customizability

« previous: Your New Year's Resolution: Don't Get Hacked | next: What Does NOT NULL Mean, Really? »

Convert ext3 to ext4 for Much Faster Disk Checks

# Filed on Apr 22, 2010 by AnthonyDiSante / 2 replies

Now that ext4 has been in the mainline Linux kernel for a while, and has become the default filesystem (replacing ext3) in Ubuntu, I decided to use it when creating a new filesystem on a backup disk recently.

I was blown away by how much faster the fsck operation is on ext4 compared to ext3.  For a partition of a few hundred gigabytes, where the fsck took around an hour on ext3, it took about a minute on ext4.  Apparently, overall performance is improved too, but this improvement in the filesystem-check process is just incredible.

To convert an existing ext3 filesystem to ext4, you just need a single command, followed by an fsck:

tune2fs -O extents,uninit_bg,dir_index /dev/sdXX
e2fsck -fD /dev/sdXX

Of course replace "sdXX" with your actual device name.  You can also include the -C0 option to e2fsck if you want a progress bar for the operation.  And note this from the kernel.org wiki:

Running fsck will complain about "One or more block group descriptor checksums are invalid" - this is expected and one of the reasons why tune2fs requests to fsck.

See this Ubuntu help page for more details, including how to do this conversion for your active root filesystem.

Comments:

01. Oct 25, 2012 at 04:50pm by Robert:

is it still so much faster when the high water mark has been reached?  Ie any drive that has gone anywhere near 100% on the partition (even if its now say back down to 20% usage)?

02. Oct 25, 2012 at 05:04pm by AnthonyDiSante:

Hmm, I’m not sure.  I haven’t had a chance to test that so far.

Reply to this message here:

Your name
Email (why?)
Website (if you have one)
Subject
search posts:

[ home | archives ]

Shopping Cart

Client Quotes

I just wanted to say that yours is the first product that I've tested so far that hasn't failed on handling uploads.  This is going to work for a print company, so they are handling nothing but large files and all the other solutions I've tried so far have not been reliable.  So far yours has been 100% successful in my tests.
– Kevin H.
FileChucker is a great drop-in solution for file uploads, and worth every penny of its very reasonable cost.  Encodable's support is excellent to boot.
– Loren A.
I just want to say you guys really stand alone in that you have a quality product and you provide genuine customer service.  It's sad but those qualities are seldom found separately, much less together.  Thanks again for your time and help.
– Alex S.
Just one word: Fantastic.  10-minute job to plug FileChucker into my app, and it now works a treat.  It's through the hard work by people like yourselves that make my job so much easier.  Congratulations on an outstanding product... Many many thanks.
– Sean F.
The work, the thought and the organization you put into this app is incredible.
– Bruce C.
Why didn't I just do this from the get-go?  So much easier.  Thanks for your work.  FileChucker makes my work easier.
– Dominic M.
Our members think your software is fantastic...  I would recommend your software and your company to anyone.  Thanks for all your help.  It has been a pleasure dealing with you.
– Tommy A.
Nice script, it's saving the day on our project.
– Aaron W.
The amount of customization in the program is incredible.  I was able to integrate it into my existing page layout relatively simply.  I was also able to easily customize the look/feel to match the current site.
– Jason M.
FileChucker is working great...  Clients love it.  Vendors love it.  We love it.
– Gerry W.
Thank you VERY much for all of your help.  You've really impressed me.  We have support agreements for other software that costs thousands of dollars / year (just for the support), and most of them aren't as helpful as you have been.
– Keith Y.
FileChucker is helping drive the backend of several high profile entertainment sites for people like Shania Twain and Dolly Parton.  We're also using it to drive backend file uploads for a multi-billion dollar banking institution.  It's a great product.  We've tried other "chucking" upload solutions with progress bars using flash and php, but nothing works as reliably as FileChucker.
– Michael W.
I looked all over trying to find a simple cgi script.  I found that FileChucker was by far the best.  If you have issues with your hosting service's php.ini max upload size then this is the way to go.  Looking forward to future enhancements.
– Bob C.
You've done a wonderful job with FileChucker and UserBase, and they have made a big difference to how our website runs.
– Nicholas H.
Thanks again for a great product and great support - beyond expectations.
– Greg S.
I want to thank you for your efforts on Userbase. It has become an integral part of our business and has allowed us to branch out and begin using automation on a lot of our processes. Userbase has become the gateway to advancement for our company's processes for our clients and employees.
– Guy Smith, Critical Signal Technologies
I just installed the demo of your product and got it up and running in no time.  I searched high and low for a decent login script and thank God I found yours.
– Adrian F.
Do you know how rare it is to have a "canned" shopping cart that can easily do complex pricing options on a single item?  Basically, they don't exist!  I have looked.  Everywhere!  And the few that might even come close to CornerStore's functionality cost a fortune!
– Tashina P.