XFS
Ranked 5 of 9 filesystems by recommenders
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.
16 people recommended XFS in Hacker News comments, 3 had mixed feelings and 9 criticized it, November 2025 to October 2026.
Summary written by Claude from 35 comments.
28 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 16
- mixed feelings
- 3
- warn against or regret it
- 9
The record
Recommended in 9 of 12 months
In 16 different threads.
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 16 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 1.7 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 9 of 12 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
- Recommended in 16 threadsNeeds 5 or more, met.
- The biggest thread supplies 13% of its recommendersNeeds half or less, met.
The same rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. Mixed feelings count toward neither side. How the badge works
What people say about it
Reasons grouped from a sample of 34 of the 37 opinions about it, picked in proportion to how many people recommend it, have mixed feelings and criticize it. Each mark is one comment in the sample. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Mature and stable in production
“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.”
Comment from 8 Jun 2026 in “What is the purpose of the lost+found folder in Linux and Unix?” “XFS is an extremely mature file system if you don't need anything fancy”
Comment from 21 Jan 2026 in “Ask HN: Is Linux Safe to Daily drive in 2026?” “Very solid and no such issues.”
Comment from 5 Feb 2026 in “It's 2026, Just Use Postgres” - Comment from 10 Apr 2026 in “Jennifer Aniston and Friends Cost Us 377GB and Broke Ext4 Hardlinks”
Widely used default choice
“everyone uses btrfs or xfs or even ext4 with FDE without any problems”
Comment from 4 Mar 2026 in “Welcome (back) to Macintosh” “xfs/lvm-raid10 or ext4/lvm-raid10, obviously.”
Comment from 19 Sep 2026 in “Btrfs/ZFS/bcachefs under workloads classic benchmarks skip” “use ZFS or LVM + XFS on your machine”
Comment from 12 Mar 2026 in “Show HN: s@: decentralized social networking over static sites” - Comment from 23 Sep 2026 in “Swap, ZRAM, Zswap and Hibernate on NixOS”
Fast in practice
“It's a nice filesystem (and it's very fast) but it's just a filesystem.”
Comment from 6 Feb 2026 in “It's 2026, Just Use Postgres” “I prefer XFS as significantly faster”
Comment from 14 Feb 2026 in “Backblaze Drive Stats for 2025” “XFS was/is astonishingly fast.”
Comment from 9 Nov 2025 in “IRIX Introduction” Handles many files well
“XFS works just fine for handling large numbers of files/directories”
Comment from 23 Mar 2026 in “This Linux FS was supposed to change everything–here's the dark reason it failed” “50TB+ on ext4 and xfs, and no, no bit rot.”
Comment from 6 Apr 2026 in “Case study: recovery of a corrupted 12 TB multi-device pool”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Data loss after crashes or power outages
“All the HDDs using journalized filesystems were corrupted sooner or later, including NTFS, ext3, reiserfs, XFS.”
Comment from 2 Aug 2026 in “NetBSD 11.0 Released” “Only FS since Reiser and early XFS that I've completely lost data to on healthy hardware”
Comment from 21 Aug 2026 in “Linux 7.2 Released” “My data loss with XFS was some 20 years ago with Linux 2.4.x after a power loss.”
Comment from 8 Jan 2026 in “Native Amiga Filesystems on macOS / Linux / Windows with FUSE” - Comment from 15 Sep 2026 in “Oracle’s 6am layoff emails hit staff amid new wave of cuts”
- Comment from 16 Sep 2026 in “Oracle’s 6am layoff emails hit staff amid new wave of cuts”
Issues at larger scales
“only had problems at larger scales (that still fit on a machine) with it”
Comment from 3 Dec 2025 in “MinIO is now in maintenance-mode” “it ran into issues, including out‑of‑memory errors on Linux with XFS”
Comment from 1 Feb 2026 in “Sparse File LRU Cache”
Other filesystems people recommend
The four most recommended other filesystems, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
See all 9 filesystems, rankedWhat people said
34 of the 37 opinions about it, picked in proportion to the three counts, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“XFS, which has no data checksums at all”
“Swap files are fine on ext4 and xfs”
“xfs/lvm-raid10 or ext4/lvm-raid10, obviously.”
“its b-tree stores directories and small files in the same level of the tree, which makes directory operations bloated”
“Power outage. Boom, lost half my home dir.”
“The only time I ever actually verifiably lost data to a system crash was on XFS.”
“Only FS since Reiser and early XFS that I've completely lost data to on healthy hardware”
“The right technical solution would have been to merge a good Linux file system, e.g. XFS”
“now at least for XFS I know with certainty that it can pass through numerous power failures without any problems”
“All the HDDs using journalized filesystems were corrupted sooner or later, including NTFS, ext3, reiserfs, XFS.”
“I'm very happy with my choice today”
“their data is not stored on any one system (local XFS, Ceph, Lustre), a recipe for disaster”
“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.”
“Filling completely the HDD or SSD has never caused any problems.”
“tends to handle being full very badly, leading to system lockups and blocked tasks”
“it's really, really stable”
“it doesn't have per-inode hard link limits”
“50TB+ on ext4 and xfs, and no, no bit rot.”
“we moved to xfs because of flexibility”
“XFS works just fine for handling large numbers of files/directories”
“use ZFS or LVM + XFS on your machine”
“rsync, ssh, sshd and the filesystems are faster than this”
“everyone uses btrfs or xfs or even ext4 with FDE without any problems”
“I prefer XFS as significantly faster”
“It's a nice filesystem (and it's very fast) but it's just a filesystem.”
“Very solid and no such issues.”
“it ran into issues, including out‑of‑memory errors on Linux with XFS”
“People may argue that zfs of xfs or jfs or ffs is better than ext4…”
“XFS is an extremely mature file system if you don't need anything fancy”
“My data loss with XFS was some 20 years ago with Linux 2.4.x after a power loss.”
“But then xfs and zfs are overkill too.”
“only had problems at larger scales (that still fit on a machine) with it”
“I still look at XFS skeptically after a crash”
“XFS was/is astonishingly fast.”
Counts come from 1,791,911 Hacker News comments labeled by Claude, November 2025 to October 2026, with data through October 31, 2026. Counts updated 2 Nov 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.