What type of file system does a Email server use?

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Limp Gawd
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Oct 29, 2002
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I've been thinking about this lately and it doesn't seem logical for a email server to run on FAT32 or even NTFS. Text based emails are noramllly aroud 1 to 2kb so if they were using NTFS and each email was stored as a separate file, then each email would waste around 2kb of the server's HD. This seems like a massive waste of space. Does anyone know what kind of file system they use?
 
the 'email server' will use whatever filesystem the host operating system is using....will it not? I would say if you are THAT worried about disk space usage, AND you have that high of a volume of email coming into your server, you ought to look into buying some 160gb IDE drives off of newegg for your mail server :rolleyes:
 
yeah it really depends on the host OS, also remember in most cases each email isnet a single file but part of a bigger file.
 
the 'email server' will use whatever filesystem the host operating system is using....will it not?
Click to expand...

Indeed it will.

Any drive over 2 gigs in NTFS has a cluster size of 4kb. In FAT32 it's 8kb. It is alot of wasted space, yes.
 
Actually, this totally depends on the email server software. Enterprise packages like MS Exchange use a database to store the emails. Using a database eliminates the filesystem waste since the data will be stored in one large file.

If the software uses a file-per-email system, then it's just as everyone has said, there will be wasted space.


 
Valdain said:
Actually, this totally depends on the email server software. Enterprise packages like MS Exchange use a database to store the emails. Using a database eliminates the filesystem waste since the data will be stored in one large file.

If the software uses a file-per-email system, then it's just as everyone has said, there will be wasted space.
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So, I could create a 1kb text document, copy it, and ultra paste it (hold the buttons down), and fill my HDD, but still have space. :p I'm going to do that later today, I think. I've got 400 gb to fill, though. o_O Most of it's... Already full? Imagine that, my anime collection takes up almost 200 gigs of space! Time for a new fileserver.
 
So, I could create a 1kb text document, copy it, and ultra paste it (hold the buttons down), and fill my HDD, but still have space. :p I'm going to do that later today, I think. I've got 400 gb to fill, though. o_O Most of it's... Already full? Imagine that, my anime collection takes up almost 200 gigs of space! Time for a new fileserver.
Click to expand...
Huh? You smokin' crack, boy?
 
I can speak for Lotus Notes:
Ours sit on 2k Servers running NTFS for the 'email' array.
Notes creates a .nsf file for each email box or lotus database.
For lack of a better analogy, it works similar to an access database. You can't easily extract data from the .nsf without the notes client (ie, you can't open it with notepad and see their email)
but i can say notes is pretty efficient with the email databases. The .nsf's are almost the exact same size as the total amount of attachments the user has. You can also 'optimize' or compress the databases to take up less room. We have some 600Mb+ databases used/modified by over 700 users that become 'fragmented' over time, and the optimizer will often shave off ~100Mb when run.
 
Wasted disk space is not so big of a deal as access speed of said files.

fat32 is a bad choice for this reason, and same with ntfs to a lesser extent. ext2 is ok, same with ext3 with some tweaks. The fs that really busts it's balls with small file access speeds is reiserfs ( and xfs, to a lesser extent ).
 
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