Btrfs vs ext4 which is best?

Ask Fedora
1

In fedora 42, btrfs or ext4 what is your choice and why?

2

I use btrfs. there nothing as which is the best if there was something best kernel dont have 100 filesystems .
btrfs have and btrfs is a modern fs where as ext4 is not but ext4 is more performant in some case like xfs,
cow reduces ssd quick wear out.

and yes i am recently trying out a new filesystem called bcachefs on a external drive i find this good really good it is a perfect balance of features of btrfs and speed of xfs. yes on kernel 6.14 the experimental tag was removed from this filesystem.

here is quick compare from internet

A. Advanced Features

  • Btrfs: Snapshots, compression (zstd), checksums, subvolumes, built-in RAID.
  • ext4: None of these (requires LVM for snapshots).

B. Best Use Cases

  • Btrfs: SSDs, system drives (for snapshots/rollbacks), modern setups.
  • ext4: HDDs, external drives, legacy systems, maximum stability.

C. Compatibility & Stability

  • Btrfs: Modern but complex; RAID 5/6 still risky.
  • ext4: Rock-solid, universal support (Windows/macOS readable with tools).

D. Performance

  • Btrfs: Faster on SSDs (with compression), slower on HDDs (fragmentation).
  • ext4: Consistent speed, better for HDDs.

E. Fedora’s Default?

  • Btrfs (since Fedora 33), but ext4 remains a safe fallback.
3

Depends what you want to do. BTRFS is easy to make system snap shot with , While Ext4 is well tested and stable. I am just using btrfs for the first time here. But it’s your choice.

4

Btrfs for your boot drive. Primarily because it supports snapshots.

Ext4 for any additional drives.

5

For now I stick with ext4 because it seems more mature and easier to manage, and I don’t care for snapshots, compression and encryption much.

6

I have both in use on my systems.

For all new installs I use btrfs as I want it’s integrity checking.
ext4 can start to corrupt and that corruption may not be detected.
In the server world the default is xfs by the way.

I consider btrfs to be stable and production ready.

7

ext4; I don’t need snapshots or CoW from Btrfs and like doing nobarrier with ext4 on NVMe

1 Like
8

Personally, I use XFS. It’s mature, stable, performant and it offers snapshotting through LVM.