Hopefully this is my final edit before getting a full solution but I just want to say that if you are going to either resort to belittling me for not using better/newer hardware or you make it obvious that you haven’t fully read the post before commenting, I’m not going to respond to your comment.
In Windows, there’s a file/folder option called “Compress contents to save disk space”. What it does is it compresses the files, as the name suggests, but leaves them accessible as though they aren’t. This doesn’t really have much of a benefit on newer storage devices but on older storage devices, in addition to saving space, it allows files to potentially read faster.
As I have some old storage devices that I want to run games from, I think this will be a great option to have if I could find something similar for Linux. I tried looking online myself but search engines are terrible and I couldn’t find anything though them. So, I decided to post about this here, to see if anyone knows of anything I could try.
Edit: I have figured out how to use BTRFS and enable what it calls “transparent file compression”. Games are running decently well and I’m able to run games that are much larger than the devices original capacity (it seems to be around 2 to 2.5 times the original free space, on average), so I’m going to use that on most of my old storage devices at least for the time being. The only problem I’m having is that I want to use F2FS on my oldest storage device, as BTRFS takes up too much space on that device.
When formatted to BTRFS, there’s only about 40MB of free space and with compression it can hold around 100MB worth of files. Meanwhile, there’s about 80MB of free space with F2FS and I was told by multiple users that F2FS also supports transparent file compression, which should get me around 200MB worth of files on that device because it’s documented to support the same compression methods as BTRFS. But I can’t get files to compress and I’m not getting any error messages to try and diagnose the problem. Based on what the documentation says, I’m supposed to do something like this:
sudo mkfs.f2fs -f -O extra_attr,inode_checksum,sb_checksum,compression /dev/mmcblk0p1
sudo mount -o compress_algorithm=zstd,compress_extension=* /dev/mmcblk0p1 '/home/j/mountpoint/128mb'
chattr -R +c '/home/j/mountpoint/128mb'
The device will mount like this but files aren’t compressing when added, nor are they compressed if using the last command after they’ve been moved.
https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/SquashFS
This is frequently used for USB drive purposes.
I would use that but I’d prefer something that isn’t read-only. Since I’m using it to run games, I’m going to need write access for a lot of them.
I can try that but I can’t find any instructions on how to format a device for squashfs. Can you link me to something I can use?
sudo nano /etc/fstab
Then replace “defaults” with “compress=zstd” on your desired partitions.
IMO stick with btrfs. Also, the storage space between file systems is exactly the same, given the same hardware.
I’m only seeing the boot drive and the swapfile even though the SD card is mounted and working. Do I have to manually add a new entry somewhere in this file?
Also, no it is different. If I format the SD card to BTRFS it only has 40MB of free space, while it has about 80MB of free space when formatted to F2FS. I’d be getting double the free space if I can get compression working in F2FS.
The fstab file is used to define how disk partitions or remote file systems are mounted into your computer. Removable drives such as USB drives or SD cards are not shown there, because if they were, your system would complain at boot that it can’t find the requested USB drive.
About F2FS having double the storage space of btrfs. In all honesty, it doesn’t make sense to me. Do you mean it shows you potentially being able to store 80 megabytes if you can get compression working or does it just show 80 megabytes instead of 40, after formatting the file system?
The free space that I mentioned is both what Linux Mint’s file manager states and is what both files systems can hold on the SD card when compression is disabled. If I format the device to BTRFS and disable compression, I can only put 40MB of files onto the SD card. If I format the SD card for F2FS, it can hold about 80MB worth of files. If I format the SD card to BTRFS but enable compression, it says 40MB but it can hold around 100MB worth of files (at least with the files I’m testing). From what I’ve read and seen, if I can get compression working in F2FS, it’ll still say 80MB but probably hold around 200MB of files since, according to the documentation, both file systems support the same compression methods.
What do you mean, btrfs “takes too much space”? That’s not a sentence that belongs to file system stuff in any way.
The disk is the space. You make it usable with a fs, for which you can partition portions of it.And also, i’ve had bad experiences with f2fs long-term stability.
When I format the SD card to BTRFS, it only has about 40MB of free space available. But when I format the SD card to F2FS, it has about 80MB of free space available.
The equivalent would be either zfs or btrfs compression. Transparent to applications, you don’t have to do anything special other than enable it.
As I mention in another comment, I’m having a bit of a problem. I tried the smallest device first but it’s too small for btrfs and I can’t figure out how to format devices in zfs. Unless xfs is the same as zfs, the option isn’t available in gparted and mkfs gives an error saying that the zfs file doesn’t exist. If it’s possible to install zfs through apt, “apt search zfs” gives a lot of results for zfs.
For ZFS check the instruction for your distribution here: https://openzfs.github.io/openzfs-docs/Getting Started/index.html
I apparently already have it installed but mkfs still thinks that zfs isn’t available. Am I supposed to use something else?
You’ll need to read the documentation to understand its concepts first. You don’t use
mkfsbutzpoolto create a pool then usezfsto create the fs on it. ZFS is usually used with some sort of raid configuration so most doc will show this but you can create a pool with no replication using a single drive.
PM me if you need help with ZFS. I’ve gotten quite good at setting it up.
How small are these devices? I think the other problem is that neither BTRFS nor zfs really are suitable for removable devices, and definitely not for ones smaller than probably 8Gb at the very least.
Unlike NTFS which is just a file system, both BTRFS and ZFS do volume management too, so it’s not just a single partition thing; they prefer to take over an entire volume and manage everything.
So while they’re the closest filesystem with NTFS-like transparent compression……they don’t match exactly.
I also hazard to guess if the devices you’re using are too small to accept a BTRFS formatted volume, no amount of compression is going to be enough to fit what you need.
If you just want to play with a bunch of small old devices……maybe play with LVM and small RAID arrays and configurations instead. You can the build a bigger volume out of a bunch of those disks together and then put a BTRFS or zfs volume on them. Can be fun to experiment and learn with anyway.
How small is your smallest device? BTRFS doesn’t have a minimum size, but practically probably 50-100mb is just about doable before even just setting things up get complex. Having said that though, it’s copy-on-write and has overhead as a result, so may not function well below 1gb.
ZFS meanwhile really won’t work well below probably 8gb. It’s also copy-on-write but with a lot more overhead due to how it works. It really works best on big drives and filesystems.
If your old storage is in the mb range, then really neither will help you achieve what you want.
BTRFS and ZFS do offer the same benefits as NTFS with regard to compression and speeding up some slower devices (due to lowering the actual read/writes needed to achieve the same result as the data is compressed into a smaller space and decompressed rapidly by the PC in memory), but NTFS can go be used on much smaller disk sizes due to how it works. BTRFS and ZFS are designed and optimised with other benefits in mind. And NTFS compression isn’t well supported in Linux.
You could a filesystem that supports compression like ZFS or BTRFS.
This is at file system level… Checkout btrfs and zfs, I am quite positive both can compress like you want.
Never used this feature myself, so cannot be more specific.
Also, there are some read-only compressed filesystems for Linux that you can also use, they offer best compression but data is read only.
Okay, I’m having a bit of a problem. I tried the smallest device first but it’s too small for btrfs and I can’t figure out how to format devices in zfs. Unless xfs is the same as zfs, the option isn’t available in gparted and mkfs gives an error saying that the zfs file doesn’t exist. If it’s possible to install zfs through apt, “apt search zfs” gives a lot of results for zfs.
How small is that device??? Didn’t even knew btrfs has a minimum size.
After for zfs, you probably have to install some software or kernel patches
It’s 128 MB, brtfs needs at least 256 MB. Also yes, I’m aware that I’d need to install something to use zfs but I don’t know where to look to find out what I’d need to install.
Damn, where did you even find such a small drive? The last time I used such a small device was the USB stick I brought to highschool in 2009. Even the free giveaway USB drives I have are at least 2GB. You probably have more RAM than storage?
I got it from my mom’s old camera that she bought in the 90s. She had no use for it, so she gave it to me over 10 years ago but then I had no use for it so I just took the SD card out and decided to use it for whatever I could think of.
Huh. My computer allows me to format a 128MB image file with brtfs. It won’t do it at 64MB though.
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Good call. Seems minimum for ZFS is three quarters of a Gigabyte, anyway. And definitely not made for what OP does 😆
How are you trying to format the device? I got that error message when using gparted.
truncate -s 128M fs.img parted fs.img mklabel gpt mkpart primary btrfs 1MiB 100% quit sudo losetup --find --partscan --show fs.img sudo mkfs.btrfs /dev/loop0p1You should be able to skip the loop device stuff and work on an actual device instead. Seems to me the limit is somewhere between 64M and 128M.
Edit: But as edinbruh said, maybe try f2fs if it’s a flash device, that’s probably a bit more lightweight?! And since I don’t know what you’re doing… If it’s embedded stuff and you’re alright with read-only, you might want to use squashfs.
I got brtfs working on a different storage device but I can’t tell if I set it up properly or not. I’m using the documentation that another user posted but it’s a bit confusing to me and I need to test it more.
For my 128 MB sd card, I am trying f2fs because that’s working. It does seem to write much faster than it did with ext4 but it seems to take up more space and it now has about 25% less free space, and it doesn’t seem to compress files. I’ll have to do more testing before I determine whether this what I go with or not.
As for squashfs, I probably don’t want that.
If it’s a flash memory (sd card, usb stick, ssd, etc), you could try f2fs, it’s very light, and it supports compression and is meant specifically for that kind of devices (well, more for ssds).
But judging your experience from your comments, I suggest you don’t delve into niche filesystems until you have more experience with Linux, especially for something like 128MB. I especially suggest you avoid zfs for now.
It is an sd card and I did just format it to f2fs but how do I enable the compression? It does seem much faster that ext4 but it seems to also take up more space on the sd card, as I’ve lost about 25% of the free space after formatting it, so I’d like to enable the compression.
As for zfs, I have been using Linux for over a few years at this point but I’ve mostly been avoiding some of the more complicated stuff. So if it is more complicated than what I originally thought, then I’ll avoid that for now as well.
So, first of all, there is no gui for this, that I’m aware of, so you will have to do it from terminal. Second, on f2fs, compression works that you don’t enable compression for a folder, instead you mount the drive with compression enabled, and new files will be compressed automatically.
So what you need is to set up your disk to be mounted with compression. There are many paths you can follow here. If you want your drive to be (almost) permanently connected, the easiest way is to use “/etc/fstab”. If you want to use it as a regular SD card, mounting and ejecting it from your file explorer etcetera, then you should go here and learn how to have udisks2 mount your device with compression, which should be what your desktop environment uses to mount drives. I suggest you set that up for your specific device, and not for all f2fs devices. Good luck.
You can look up other useful f2fs options on the arch wiki. I suggest you add all those options that reduces writes to your disk and improve durability (like lazytime).
You should use zstd as compression algorithm, and because this is a slow and small drive, you can crank up the level of compression.
If you manage to pull this off, the next time you install a (bigger and faster) drive on your pc, you can try to look into zfs.
I read the page you linked to but I have no idea what I’m supposed to do with it. If it’s talking about using the “mount” command, I’ve already used that and even though I specifically enabled zstd as the compression method, files aren’t being compressed. I know this because I’m using a file that’s slightly larger than the free space but it’s still giving errors about not having enough space.
Today I learned f2fs supports compression.
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Xfs and zfs are two different filesystems.
Okay, I can try both of those out.
Not sure that’s relevant, but I’m playing around with Linux on some obsolete Windows tablets with cheap eMMC disks (one of which is broken, so I replaced it with a no name microSD card, plus USB drive), and I format my disks to f2fs, which theoretically should help with both keeping the disks for longer, and accessing the data faster.
I’ll have to test that out more later but I did format the sd card to f2fs and it did seem to write files very fast when I did a simple test. The only issue I’m seeing is that it has about 25% less space than it did when I had it formatted for ext4, is that normal for f2fs?
Make sure you’re actually filling the volume, and also keep in mind reporting may be different (with or without filesystem index metadata, etc)
Also, you can simply use regular file systems and compressed files, and then use a RAM drive (assuming you have enough RAM free) and access the files that way instead
I’m just going by what Linux Mint’s file manager says and it’s saying that the used space is about 40 MB with f2fs while it was about less than half of that when it was formatted to ext4.
What’s a RAM drive? I have 8 GB of RAM and I have ZRAM enabled, so I should have enough RAM for most of the files I’d consider using it for.
RAM drive is when you hold the entire file system in RAM, it’s used for stuff like Linux Live CD boot with no writable storage but you can use it for anything.
Is it read-only, or does it write the files at some point?
FYI digging through documentation reminded me of squashfs. It does what it sounds like. But it’s read only, so you would have to use an overlay FS to cache changes and then overwrite the whole squashfs volume at once to sync changes.
Both are possible but read only is more common
Just download more RAM.
Sounds like you’re looking for something like archivemount.
I tried that before but it didn’t work properly for me as the compressed files would end up getting corrupted.
Could that be due to a failing SD card or flash memory? The uncompressed data might be getting corrupted too, it just wouldn’t return you an error depending on the file type (text documents for example would never error, they would just end up with garbled text).
Based on your other comments, if you’re using an old 128mb SD card, this seems kind of likely. I’ve had many SD cards and USB sticks go bad after files have been copied on and off of them too many times.
No, it’s not that. When I format the SD card to BTRFS and enable file compression, the files are getting compressed when I move them to it. It’s just F2FS that I’m having issues with.
There’s an interesting project called DwarFS. I have it on my todolist to check it out but as I understand it you basically create a compressed read-only archive that is mountable and readable just like any other disk - https://github.com/mhx/dwarfs . Maybe this is something for your use case?
Maybe for some things but because I’m using it for games, the “read-only” might limit what games I can use this with. I might still try it out though.
Funnily enough it’s often used in the pirate scene to distribute games. But only as archives.
Unfortunately I haven’t tested it so I cannot fully advise on that but I have seen some “repacks” on the high seas where a whole wine prefix with a game already installed was compressed to a single
dwarwhich you can mount and play with configs and saves in your ~.I know it’s not advisable, I’m just a little crazy.
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That’s not what I’m doing, I’m not trying to archive the games. Did you not read the last part of my post? I literally said that I’m using it to run games from these older devices, not archive them. I use an external hard drive for archiving them if I need to keep them long term.
Also, believe it or not, but a lot of the games I have are not already compressed that well. I have games that are normally over 4GB that I’m now able to run from a 1GB flash drive because I can use BTRFS’s transparent file compression to compress them well enough to be ran from that device and they do run decently well like this.
The Compress attribute has been in even ext3 since day 1. I’ve never tried it, though.
If you are talking about what I think you’re talking about, that doesn’t do what I need it to. That just compresses the file(s) like a normal compression tool. I need something that will allow me to continue accessing the files as if they’re not compressed while keeping them compressed.
What are you saving on that drive? Many data file formats already have compression of their own and don’t benefit much from file system compression. So if this is for media files, for example, it’s likely to add CPU overhead without a big benefit in transfer speed.
ZFS is not installed by default with most Linux distributions due to its license. It’s something you install after the os. Btrfs should work, but I see some discussion online of 128 or 256MB minimum volume size.
I’m using it for games, I know it’s not really recommended to do that but I’m doing it anyways. I’m trying btrfs on one of my devices but I may need zfs for one of the others, however, I don’t know how to install it.
F2FS seems to do what you want, it’ll reserve the original size of your file but compress what’s actually written. Performance numbers might be massively inflated if your writes don’t saturate the cache in RAM.
I’ve used BTRFS on SD cards before and it’s mostly fine, but it will struggle massively if over 90% full, or if you have a < 1 GB volume and are, say, frequently updating a handful of files that together take up more than half its capacity. Mostly due to the CoW mechanism, it needs some headroom to make a copy of whatever files are being modified.
I figured out what I did wrong but now I’m getting a different error message. It’s saying “Error: Wrong features compress_algorithm=zstd” even though the page I was given says it should be possible. Any ideas on what I should do to fix that?
I’ve done some testing with f2fs and it does seem like what I want to go with but I can’t get compression working. Someone else linked me to this page but for some reason the command on that page gives an error message saying “Error: Failed to get the device stat!”. I already asked another user but assuming I can get it working, how would I change the command they provide to enable zstd compression. From what I’ve read, zstd is the compression method I want to be using.
My “I don’t need to save space, I want it for a different purpose” tee shirt is raising a lot of questions answered by my “I don’t need to save space, I want it for a different purpose” tee shirt.
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