{"slug": "xfs", "name": "XFS", "category": "files", "category_name": "Files, sync and backup", "description": "", "recommenders": 5, "commenters": 9, "warners": 0, "score": 5.528, "rising": -0.31, "first": "2026-01-20", "latest": "2026-09-20", "why": "I'm running XFS on all filesystems (besides /boot and /efi), and they report being full often enough without any crashes/reboots.", "why_is_quote": true, "has_verdict": false, "sentiment": {"recommend": 5, "neutral": 2, "compare": 2, "warn": 0}, "spark": [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 2, 1, 0, 1, 0], "listed": true, "loved": [], "caveat": "", "short_quote": "I'm running XFS on all filesystems (besides /boot and /efi), and they report being full often enough without any crashes/reboots.", "kind": "", "icon": false, "domain": "man7.org", "github_repo": null, "official_url": "", "pricing": "", "aliases": ["XFS"], "verdict": null, "praise": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 796424064, "item_id": 49776504, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49776504", "by": "BoingBoomTschak", "date": "2026-09-20", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Why does the CoW button remove XFS from the list?", "excerpt": "Good job and clean website interface! Something as exhaustive as this is clearly needed. Some remarks: 1. Why does the CoW button remove XFS from the list? Even https://github.com/fenio/modern-fs-benchmark/blob/main/scripts/fs/xfs.sh mentions it has reflink enabled 2. If you have the time, adding XFS + mdraid + dm-integrity [1] (in bitmap mode) as a comparison point against ZFS RAID-Zx might be an interesting data po", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Btrfs/ZFS/bcachefs under workloads classic benchmarks skip"}, {"id": 781264961, "item_id": 48829060, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48829060", "by": "a-french-anon", "date": "2026-07-08", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I'm very happy with my choice today", "excerpt": "I think it's appropriate to link to my blog post about building such a NAS but with very different technologies: dm-integrity, mdadm and XFS. The reason being that as a C/C++ dev following OpenZFS development closely, I found the focus on ginormous features over general stability and the constant problems due to the SPL/separate page cache too worrying. Sure, I traded the convenience of kitchen sink (or Swiss army kn", "context": "", "use_case": "NAS filesystem", "switched_from": "OpenZFS", "story": "How to Build a Minimal ZFS NAS Without Synology, QNAP, TrueNAS"}, {"id": 775093920, "item_id": 48443370, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48443370", "by": "sigio", "date": "2026-06-08", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I'm running XFS on all filesystems (besides /boot and /efi), and they report being full often enough without any crashes/reboots.", "excerpt": "Don't know if this is a regression from before, since in the RHEL 5/6 days I used XFS filesystems as my default filesystem on large storage-pools. Since XFS doesn't have a shrink option, I would create filesystems of a few gigabytes in size, and grow them whenever needed. I mostly used them for monthly archiving of uploads to a customer's website, so there would be a YYYY-MM lvm volume with an XFS filesystem, and dur", "context": "", "use_case": "filesystem on laptop and storage pools", "switched_from": "", "story": "What is the purpose of the lost+found folder in Linux and Unix?"}, {"id": 775079552, "item_id": 48442472, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48442472", "by": "adrian_b", "date": "2026-06-08", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I have been using XFS since 2005", "excerpt": "The last time when I have used RHEL was decades ago, so I do not have any idea about what happens there. On the other hand, I have been using XFS since 2005 (since when I have transitioned from 32-bit Linux to 64-bit Linux), on a great variety of hardware systems, servers, desktops, mini-PCs, laptops. My file systems are typically mostly full and from time to time I had incidents when some job failed by filling compl", "context": "Gentoo user", "use_case": "filesystem on servers, desktops, laptops", "switched_from": "", "story": "What is the purpose of the lost+found folder in Linux and Unix?"}, {"id": 763569184, "item_id": 47723074, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47723074", "by": "burnt-resistor", "date": "2026-04-10", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "xfs on mdraid is what I use on my homelab NAS", "excerpt": "xfs on mdraid is what I use on my homelab NAS across several giant RAID arrays. While it lacks some integrity and CoW features, it's really, really stable. I had ZoL ZFS troubles that the maintainers shrugged off requiring transferring everything to another volume.. so I won't ever use or recommend ZFS unless it's Sun-Oracle.", "context": "homelab NAS owner", "use_case": "homelab NAS storage", "switched_from": "", "story": "Jennifer Aniston and Friends Cost Us 377GB and Broke Ext4 Hardlinks"}]}], "caveats": [], "who": [{"by": "adrian_b", "context": "Gentoo user", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48442472", "date": "2026-06-08"}, {"by": "burnt-resistor", "context": "homelab NAS owner", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47723074", "date": "2026-04-10"}], "tags": [], "use_cases": ["default filesystem in rhel", "online defragmentation", "nas filesystem", "filesystem on laptop and storage pools", "filesystem on servers, desktops, laptops", "homelab nas storage"], "compared": [{"slug": "zfs", "name": "ZFS", "co": 6, "switched_from": 1, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "btrfs", "name": "Btrfs", "co": 3, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "ext4", "name": "ext4", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}], "makers": [], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48409474", "title": "What is the purpose of the lost+found folder in Linux and Unix?", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49768833", "title": "Btrfs/ZFS/bcachefs under workloads classic benchmarks skip", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49702239", "title": "Oracle\u2019s 6am layoff emails hit staff amid new wave of cuts", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49494036", "title": "Defrag98: Windows 98 Disk Defragmenter Simulator Online", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48827325", "title": "How to Build a Minimal ZFS NAS Without Synology, QNAP, TrueNAS", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47717571", "title": "Jennifer Aniston and Friends Cost Us 377GB and Broke Ext4 Hardlinks", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {}, "2025-12": {}, "2026-01": {"compare": 1}, "2026-02": {}, "2026-03": {"compare": 1}, "2026-04": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-05": {}, "2026-06": {"recommend": 2}, "2026-07": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-08": {"neutral": 1}, "2026-09": {"neutral": 1, "recommend": 1}, "2026-10": {}}, "versions": [], "version_unnamed": 0, "family_ref": null, "runs_on": null, "lines": [], "quotes": [{"id": 796424064, "item_id": 49776504, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49776504", "by": "BoingBoomTschak", "date": "2026-09-20", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Why does the CoW button remove XFS from the list?", "excerpt": "Good job and clean website interface! Something as exhaustive as this is clearly needed. Some remarks: 1. Why does the CoW button remove XFS from the list? Even https://github.com/fenio/modern-fs-benchmark/blob/main/scripts/fs/xfs.sh mentions it has reflink enabled 2. If you have the time, adding XFS + mdraid + dm-integrity [1] (in bitmap mode) as a comparison point against ZFS RAID-Zx might be an interesting data po", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Btrfs/ZFS/bcachefs under workloads classic benchmarks skip"}, {"id": 795335344, "item_id": 49708459, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49708459", "by": "ghaff", "date": "2026-09-15", "version": null, "stance": "neutral", "quote": "You may not believe it but it is true", "excerpt": "You may not believe it but it is true: https://docs.redhat.com/en/documentation/red_hat_enterprise_linux/7/html/storage_administration_guide/ch-xfs I vaguely know some of the backstory of moving off ext4 (as default). As I understood it at the time, it was less focused on some of the larger systems Red Hat was interested in.", "context": "", "use_case": "Default filesystem in RHEL", "switched_from": "", "story": "Oracle\u2019s 6am layoff emails hit staff amid new wave of cuts"}, {"id": 791929904, "item_id": 49495619, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49495619", "by": "lord_dut", "date": "2026-08-30", "version": null, "stance": "neutral", "quote": "XFS does, though not visual.", "excerpt": "XFS does, though not visual. https://www.man7.org/linux/man-pages/man8/xfs_fsr.8.html", "context": "", "use_case": "Online defragmentation", "switched_from": "", "story": "Defrag98: Windows 98 Disk Defragmenter Simulator Online"}, {"id": 781264961, "item_id": 48829060, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48829060", "by": "a-french-anon", "date": "2026-07-08", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I'm very happy with my choice today", "excerpt": "I think it's appropriate to link to my blog post about building such a NAS but with very different technologies: dm-integrity, mdadm and XFS. The reason being that as a C/C++ dev following OpenZFS development closely, I found the focus on ginormous features over general stability and the constant problems due to the SPL/separate page cache too worrying. Sure, I traded the convenience of kitchen sink (or Swiss army kn", "context": "", "use_case": "NAS filesystem", "switched_from": "OpenZFS", "story": "How to Build a Minimal ZFS NAS Without Synology, QNAP, TrueNAS"}, {"id": 775093920, "item_id": 48443370, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48443370", "by": "sigio", "date": "2026-06-08", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I'm running XFS on all filesystems (besides /boot and /efi), and they report being full often enough without any crashes/reboots.", "excerpt": "Don't know if this is a regression from before, since in the RHEL 5/6 days I used XFS filesystems as my default filesystem on large storage-pools. Since XFS doesn't have a shrink option, I would create filesystems of a few gigabytes in size, and grow them whenever needed. I mostly used them for monthly archiving of uploads to a customer's website, so there would be a YYYY-MM lvm volume with an XFS filesystem, and dur", "context": "", "use_case": "filesystem on laptop and storage pools", "switched_from": "", "story": "What is the purpose of the lost+found folder in Linux and Unix?"}, {"id": 775079552, "item_id": 48442472, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48442472", "by": "adrian_b", "date": "2026-06-08", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I have been using XFS since 2005", "excerpt": "The last time when I have used RHEL was decades ago, so I do not have any idea about what happens there. On the other hand, I have been using XFS since 2005 (since when I have transitioned from 32-bit Linux to 64-bit Linux), on a great variety of hardware systems, servers, desktops, mini-PCs, laptops. My file systems are typically mostly full and from time to time I had incidents when some job failed by filling compl", "context": "Gentoo user", "use_case": "filesystem on servers, desktops, laptops", "switched_from": "", "story": "What is the purpose of the lost+found folder in Linux and Unix?"}, {"id": 763569184, "item_id": 47723074, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47723074", "by": "burnt-resistor", "date": "2026-04-10", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "xfs on mdraid is what I use on my homelab NAS", "excerpt": "xfs on mdraid is what I use on my homelab NAS across several giant RAID arrays. While it lacks some integrity and CoW features, it's really, really stable. I had ZoL ZFS troubles that the maintainers shrugged off requiring transferring everything to another volume.. so I won't ever use or recommend ZFS unless it's Sun-Oracle.", "context": "homelab NAS owner", "use_case": "homelab NAS storage", "switched_from": "", "story": "Jennifer Aniston and Friends Cost Us 377GB and Broke Ext4 Hardlinks"}, {"id": 758412501, "item_id": 47400781, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47400781", "by": "evanjrowley", "date": "2026-03-16", "version": null, "stance": "compare", "quote": "every time ZFS on Linux is discussed, someone will invariably bring up XFS.", "excerpt": "One of my favorite FreeBSD features is first-class support for ZFS boot environments. These have been working in FreeBSD/Solaris since 2008[0]. Having each boot environment available as a ZFS snapshot capable of being managed the same way as any other dataset, capable of being sent and received, is such a powerful feature. I dilligently watch the immutable/atomic Linux space to see when something implements this in t", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "I Love FreeBSD"}, {"id": 747099810, "item_id": 46693738, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46693738", "by": "magicalhippo", "date": "2026-01-20", "version": null, "stance": "compare", "quote": "In that regard it's acting more like XFS", "excerpt": "> I think you're missing the 2nd feature to the parent's point that I take issue with You're right, I did gloss over that point. I guess it should be noted that a lot of what fsck does[1] on say ext4 is something ZFS does on pool import, like replying the journal (ZIL) or trying older superblocks (uberblocks[2]). In that regard it's acting more like XFS[3] from what I can see. [1]: https://linux.die.net/man/8/fsck.ex", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Understanding ZFS Scrubs and Data Integrity"}]}