EXT3 vs EXT4 for RT-AC56U & RT-AC68U/W/P

[lime237]

Hello! Was wondering if I could get some input from RMerlin and everyone out there regarding this topic. I understand that RT-AC56U & RT-AC68U/W/P all support EXT3 as well as EXT4 filesystems. I am looking to reformat my 4TB drive, which is currently on NTFS and causing headaches. For performance and reliability reasons, would you recommend EXT3 or EXT4 for use with the Merlin firmware? And why? And if it does not matter, which one would you personally go with?
Thank you!

 

[L&LD]

For those routers, I am fairly certain that EXT4 is the recommended format.

 

[microchip]

Hello! Was wondering if I could get some input from RMerlin and everyone out there regarding this topic. I understand that RT-AC56U & RT-AC68U/W/P all support EXT3 as well as EXT4 filesystems. I am looking to reformat my 4TB drive, which is currently on NTFS and causing headaches. For performance and reliability reasons, would you recommend EXT3 or EXT4 for use with the Merlin firmware? And why? And if it does not matter, which one would you personally go with?
Thank you!

if you look for performance and reliability, Ext4 is the way to go. It's not only faster than Ext3 due to delayed allocation, extents and other optimizations, but latest version support checksumming too. It also fragments less than Ext3

 

[lime237]

Thank you all for your responses!

 

[huotg01]

Having a drive formatted ext4 (or 3) attached to the router, is it a problem when the time comes to make backups from Windows platforms ?

 

[microchip]

Having a drive formatted ext4 (or 3) attached to the router, is it a problem when the time comes to make backups from Windows platforms ?

http://www.howtogeek.com/112888/3-ways-to-access-your-linux-partitions-from-windows/

 

[NGRhodes]

Having a drive formatted ext4 (or 3) attached to the router, is it a problem when the time comes to make backups from Windows platforms ?

If you are making backups over thethe network as long as you are using Samba there should be no problems.

 

[NGRhodes]

http://www.howtogeek.com/112888/3-ways-to-access-your-linux-partitions-from-windows/

Not applicable as the drive is attached to the router, not the Windows box.

 

[NGRhodes]

if you look for performance and reliability, Ext4 is the way to go. It's not only faster than Ext3 due to delayed allocation, extents and other optimizations, but latest version support checksumming too. It also fragments less than Ext3

Yup, EXT4 supports larger file systems, takes less cpu the larger the filesystem vs EXT3, much faster file system checks. Actively developed.

The only reason to choose EXT3 is for [backwards] compatibility IMHO.

 

[tallytr]

I had I/O errors and zero KB movie files with new 4TB WD My Book NTFS, then re-formatted on Win 10 to EXT4 using MiniTool Partition Wizard Free Edition 9.1.
Now working fine.
Using Samba and copied movies back to the router attached HDD after EXT4 formatting. Took hours at around 32MB/s but still worth it I'd say.

 

[sfx2000]

For those routers, I am fairly certain that EXT4 is the recommended format.

EXT4 is the gold standard for smaller Linux platforms - EXT3 has been depreciated for some time - I recall the days when mainline Linux distributions made that jump...

 

[tallytr]

EXT4 solved all the issues I had with the 4TB WD HDD connected to the RT-AC68U. For month's I haven't had one single issue with the media server.

 

[Kanuki]

Tried both EXT3 and EXT4 on my AC3200.

All I can say is.. EXT4 is much better than EXT3.

 

[Sean Rhodes]

Maybe a moderator can comment, since I'm still unsure. I was told that although ext4 is much faster, it does not write directly to the USB, it will only write some sort of resource data and write all the information later, so in the event of power loss you are much more likely to lose data on an ext4 partition as opposed to an ext2 partition