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Related question about block sizes, but there are many many other options when creating an ext3 filesystem.

I think the other question has an answer with great advice of block size, that it general it is good if block size is the same size as CPU page size. But what about all the other options?

Community
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Prof. Falken
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Best practice is to stick with the defaults. Only exceptions are filesystems where one knows that the files stored will be all very small or the other way around: All files will be very large. In both of these cases it may be worth to adjust the block size.

Advantage of sticking with defaults is that you don't have an uncommon setup and you will not be the beta-tester for exotic combinations.

Prof. Falken
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ktf
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  • I agree. Stick with the defaults until you know and understand the options well enough that you don't need to ask. – Kevin Oct 26 '11 at 15:28
  • So you advocate the "gain knowledge without asking questions" type of learning. Got it. ;-) – Prof. Falken Oct 26 '11 at 15:30
  • I knew someone would say "stick to the defaults", so +1 for that. – Prof. Falken Oct 26 '11 at 15:32
  • @AmigableClarkKant, you got this answer partly because of how you asked the question. Instead of asking about 'best practices', you should be asking under what circumstances is tweaking a certain value appropriate. – Zoredache Oct 26 '11 at 16:31
  • I just realized that! :-/ Accepting answer. Thanks for pointing it out. Best practices IS actually to not change anything unless you know why. – Prof. Falken Oct 26 '11 at 17:07
  • Just re-read the comments and just wanted to give Amigable one more advise: "tuning" FS parameters often makes things worse because of unexpected consequences. I strongly suggest to set up a "test partition" if you want to test different settings. Set up a little benchmark that simulates your planned workload and test your changes step by step. Do not change too much parameters at a time to get a feeling what happens. If the performance gain in not significant (if there is one at all) switch back to defaults wherever possible. FS integrity is essential and defaults are well tested. – ktf Oct 27 '11 at 07:31