File system for SSD devices

You have just bought a nice SSD drive - what file system should you use for it optimal?

Ordinary file system like FAT or ext3 are designed for spinning disks and their limitations like access times and so. A solid state disk, like a SSD drive, USB memory stick, secure digital or compact flash card on the other hand do not suffer from this but have other limitations such as limited number of writes etc. It sounds logical that the chose of file system plays a significant role.

Don't bother. The choice is already made for you.

The actual flash (most often NAND flash chip) is very dependent of a suitable file system. Several specialized file systems are developed for this use, like JFFS2, YAFFS, LogFS, UBIFS etc. Actually, the NAND flash chip itself isn't even a block device, but a so called MTD device. Because of this, such a file system is a must to translate your flash memory to a block device use can use. This is the so called "flash translation layer" (FTL). Your USB memory stick, SSD etc already contain this internal FTL with its internal file system, making it emulate a block device for you to format and run FAT, ext3 or whatever.

File system for SSD devices

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