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| Rejected advice | Reason | Replacement |
|---|---|---|
| Ext4 for every workload | Maturity alone does not provide checksums, snapshots, compression, or managed multi-disk recovery | Select from the decision matrix |
noatime,nodiratime everywhere |
Redundant and can break access-time consumers | Keep default relatime; measure exceptions |
lazytime everywhere |
Delays persistence of inode timestamps | Use only for a measured workload that accepts the crash behavior |
barrier=1 everywhere |
Already automatic where supported; obsolete on XFS | Keep safe defaults and never use nobarrier generically |
Ext4 data=ordered on hard disks only |
It is Ext4's default on every block-device type | Omit it |
Ext4 commit=30, 60, or 300 |
Enlarges the crash-loss window | Keep the five-second Ext4 default |
Btrfs compress-force=zstd:3 |
Wastes CPU on incompressible files; upstream no longer recommends forcing | Use the Btrfs compression policy |
Btrfs ssd,space_cache=v2,discard=async |
Current detection and defaults already select these behaviors when appropriate | Omit them unless supporting an older measured target |
Continuous discard on every SSD |
Can create latency and leaks allocation through encryption | Use the filesystem-specific TRIM policy |
fstrim.service as the scheduled unit |
It is the one-shot worker, not the scheduler | Enable fstrim.timer |
| Disable flushes or barriers on Gen5 NVMe | Link speed is unrelated to power-loss ordering | Keep flush and FUA semantics |
| Force 4 KiB namespace or dm-crypt sectors | The three block-size layers are independent; wrong topology can corrupt partial sectors | Inspect and keep automatic defaults |
| Tune scheduler, queues, read-ahead, or dm-crypt workqueues by drive class | Synthetic gains can worsen fairness, thermals, or real latency | Benchmark the complete encrypted workload |
| Btrfs RAID5/6 for production | Official status still identifies severe known problems | RAID1, RAID1C3, RAID1C4, RAID10, or another storage design |
| Bcachefs as a universal 2026 production default | Out-of-tree DKMS and recovery path remain fast-moving | Follow the evaluation-only profile |
| exFAT as a backup or Linux data filesystem | No journal, Unix permissions, or user-data checksums | Ext4 plus LUKS2 for Linux backups; exFAT only for exchange |
| A fixed 8 GiB tmpfs for SSD longevity | Consumes volatile memory or swap and changes failure semantics | Use distribution defaults unless the workload needs tmpfs |
| Rebuild every initramfs after any fstab edit | Most data-mount changes are not early-boot inputs | Rebuild only for distribution-specific early-boot changes |
| Snapshots or RAID as backup | Same-system deletion, compromise, controller failure, and operator error remain | Independent encrypted, restore-tested copies |
The corresponding safe defaults and exceptions are documented in mount options and TRIM, encryption architecture, and the filesystem profile index.