Difference between Ext2, Ext3 & Ext4

Ext stands for Extended file system. In this article we can discuss about difference between  ext2, ext3 & ext4 file systems in linux and specification for each file system.Ext2 file system is default file system in linux.

Ext2(Extended 2 file system )	Ext3(Extended 3 file system )	Ext4(Extended 4 file system )
This was developed to overcome the limitation of the original ext file system.	The main benefit of ext3 is that it allows journaling. Journaling has a dedicated area in the file system, where all the changes are tracked. When the system crashes, the possibility of file system corruption is less because of journaling.	The ext4 file system has major improvements in terms of performance, scalability, and reliability.
Maximum individual file size can be from 16 GB to 2 TB Overall ext2 file system size can be from 2 TB to 32 TB	Maximum individual file size can be from 16 GB to 2 TB Overall ext2 file system size can be from 2 TB to 32 TB	support files and file systems of up to 16 terabytes in size
You can’t convert a ext2 file system to ext3 file system	You can convert a ext2 file system to ext3 file system directly (without backup/restore).	You can convert a ext3 file system to ext4 file system directly
Ext2 faster than ext3	prevent filesystem corruption in the case of an unclean shutdown, That makes ext3 a bit slower than ext2	. Ext4 uses extents , which improves performance when using large files and reduces metadata overhead for large files
it has sparse super blocks feature which increase file system performance	But ext3 gets more reliability and a better performance	The ext4 file system, often waits several seconds to write out changes to disk, allowing it to combine and reorder writes for better disk performance than ext3
Ext2 will not provide a fast recovery from disk problems	allows fast recovery from disk problems	ext4 also labels unallocated block groups and inode table sections accordingly, which allows them to be skipped during a file system check. This makes for quicker file system checks, which becomes more beneficial as the file system grows in size.

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