The Rise and Benefits of Ext4
The limitations of ext3 are literally gone with the next generation file system ext4.
One of the few notable features is the new “No Journaling” mode. This will be extremely useful for when you are doing intensive tasks and need that little bit of extra processor power spent on the task at hand and not watching your file system. Be warned, however, that in this mode your file system is more susceptible to being damaged from a power outage or any other thing that could go wrong. I would not recommend keeping this on all the time.
Though not in the current stable release, a very interesting feature is online defragmentation. As much as we would all love to think that the Linux file system is perfect, this is not always the case. Over time the file system becomes fragmented. As for ext4 this process takes a long, long time, but it does happen. This feature will give users of long-lived systems to defragment that old hard drive and put it back up to par where it belongs.
So far, ext4 looks like a promising file system for us to look forward to using. I know I will.
If you would like a more in-depth look at all the features available so far in ext4, take a look here: http://ext4.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Ext4_Howto#EXT4_features
Until next time, cheers.
Justin C. Kinnaird
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