Table of Contents

BTRFS vs EXT4

Setup

New factory fresh disc 1TB WD Black WDC WD1003FZEX-00MK2A0. 

sudo hdparm -tT /dev/sdc
 
/dev/sdc:
 Timing cached reads:   35212 MB in  2.00 seconds = 17633.75 MB/sec
 Timing buffered disk reads: 556 MB in  3.06 seconds = 181.66 MB/sec

Two 100MB primary partitions created in the middle of disk. First with EXT4 second with BTRFS. No tunning or additional options provided during partition creation.

Before each test system cache was emptied: 

# echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches

Buildroot build performance test

test EXT4 BTRFS
make toolchain real 6m7.255s
user 24m10.084s
sys 1m39.960s 		real 6m13.194s
user 23m56.444s
sys 1m41.756s
make uboot real 0m14.012s
user 0m29.096s
sys 0m2.008s 		real 0m12.640s
user 0m28.872s
sys 0m2.080s
make linux real 2m4.305s
user 11m38.244s
sys 0m37.728s 		real 2m2.923s
user 11m40.824s
sys 0m37.316s
make linux-reconfigure real 0m38.449s
user 0m15.380s
sys 0m2.352s 		real 0m35.751s
user 0m15.564s
sys 0m2.320s
make clean && real 0m10.746s
user 0m1.740s
sys 0m1.528s 		real 0m15.921s
user 0m1.588s
sys 0m3.412s
make sync real 0m0.185s
user 0m0.000s
sys 0m0.000s 		real 0m0.502s
user 0m0.000s
sys 0m0.072s
grep -r dupa real 0m9.038s
user 0m0.264s
sys 0m0.284s 		real 0m4.719s
user 0m0.212s
sys 0m0.296s
git checkout real 0m26.680s
user 0m1.712s
sys 0m0.700s 		real 0m19.952s
user 0m1.672s
sys 0m1.192s