# XFS

Hacker Approved page: https://hackerapproved.com/p/xfs/

16 people recommended XFS in Hacker News comments, 3 had mixed feelings and 9 criticized it, November 2025 to October 2026. It was recommended in 9 of 12 months, in 16 threads. It does not meet the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** Mature, fast Linux filesystem that people trust for large file counts and production use. Critics cite past data loss after crashes and power outages, and lack of data checksums.

Summary written by Claude from 35 comments.

## Why people recommend it

- Mature and stable in production (4 comments in the sample): "I have run it in production on both RedHat and Debian/Ubuntu based distros for decades and have never had issues after an FS full event." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48450621)) "XFS is an extremely mature file system if you don't need anything fancy" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46699943)) "Very solid and no such issues." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46907135))
- Widely used default choice (4 comments in the sample): "everyone uses btrfs or xfs or even ext4 with FDE without any problems" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47248647)) "xfs/lvm-raid10 or ext4/lvm-raid10, obviously." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49769813)) "use ZFS or LVM + XFS on your machine" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47358051))
- Fast in practice (3 comments in the sample): "It's a nice filesystem (and it's very fast) but it's just a filesystem." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46907219)) "I prefer XFS as significantly faster" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47016781)) "XFS was/is astonishingly fast." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45865147))
- Handles many files well (2 comments in the sample): "XFS works just fine for handling large numbers of files/directories" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47488295)) "50TB+ on ext4 and xfs, and no, no bit rot." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47659643))

## What people warn about

- Data loss after crashes or power outages (5 comments in the sample): "All the HDDs using journalized filesystems were corrupted sooner or later, including NTFS, ext3, reiserfs, XFS." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49142760)) "Only FS since Reiser and early XFS that I've completely lost data to on healthy hardware" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49386997)) "My data loss with XFS was some 20 years ago with Linux 2.4.x after a power loss." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46535483))
- Issues at larger scales (2 comments in the sample): "only had problems at larger scales (that still fit on a machine) with it" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46137646)) "it ran into issues, including out‑of‑memory errors on Linux with XFS" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46845301))

## Other filesystems people recommend

- [ZFS](https://hackerapproved.com/p/zfs/): 239 recommend, 34 mixed, 49 criticize
- [Btrfs](https://hackerapproved.com/p/btrfs/): 63 recommend, 31 mixed, 79 criticize
- [ext4](https://hackerapproved.com/p/ext4/): 27 recommend, 3 mixed, 4 criticize
- [bcachefs](https://hackerapproved.com/p/bcachefs/): 20 recommend, 6 mixed, 12 criticize

## The badge

A product earns the Hacker Approved badge when at least 10 people recommend it, recommenders outnumber critics at least 2 to 1 (mixed feelings count toward neither side), it was recommended in at least 4 of the 12 months and in at least 5 different threads, and no single thread supplies more than half of the people who recommend it. Health and money products are never badged.

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "XFS", https://hackerapproved.com/p/xfs/ (16 recommend, 3 mixed, 9 criticize; Hacker News comments, November 2025 to October 2026).

Counts updated 2 Nov 2026, with data through October 31, 2026.