Efficiency
In some scenarios where the majority of files are shorter than half the block size, such as in a folder of small source code files or small bitmap images, tail packing can increase storage efficiency even more than twofold, compared to file systems without tail packing.
This not only translates into conservation of disk space, but may also introduce performance increases, as due to higher locality of reference, less data has to be read, also translating into higher page cache efficiency. However, these advantages can be negated by the increased complexity of implementation.
As of 2009, the most widely used read-write file systems with support for block suballocation are Btrfs, ReiserFS, Reiser4, FreeBSD UFS2 (where it is ambiguously named "block level fragmentation").
Several read-only file systems do not use blocks at all and are thus implicitly using space as efficiently as suballocating file systems; such file systems double as archive formats.
Read more about this topic: Block Suballocation
Famous quotes containing the word efficiency:
“Nothing comes to pass in nature, which can be set down to a flaw therein; for nature is always the same and everywhere one and the same in her efficiency and power of action; that is, nature’s laws and ordinances whereby all things come to pass and change from one form to another, are everywhere and always; so that there should be one and the same method of understanding the nature of all things whatsoever, namely, through nature’s universal laws and rules.”
—Baruch (Benedict)
““Never hug and kiss your children! Mother love may make your children’s infancy unhappy and prevent them from pursuing a career or getting married!” That’s total hogwash, of course. But it shows on extreme example of what state-of-the-art “scientific” parenting was supposed to be in early twentieth-century America. After all, that was the heyday of efficiency experts, time-and-motion studies, and the like.”
—Lawrence Kutner (20th century)
“I’ll take fifty percent efficiency to get one hundred percent loyalty.”
—Samuel Goldwyn (1882–1974)