I don’t remember exactly what I said but I did rewrite my post a little bit ago, it probably wont change your question though. Basically, what I meant was that I wanted to be able to run the most games from each device. Not as in hold the most games at a time, but more so hold a bigger game than it previously could while also being able to potentially load all games faster just in general. It just so happens that compression is capable of both in the right context, and in a way, it would also prolong the longevity of the devices as well, even if that’s not my main intention.

I know that BTRFS can do this as it’s specified here and that works for me. But I was also told that F2FS could do this as well and I was linked to here. BTRFS is fine for most of my devices but there’s one device in particular that doesn’t have much space left when it’s formatted for BTRFS and therefor I’d like to get the compression in F2FS working if possible. Although, if I did get the compression in F2FS working correctly (assuming I wasn’t lied to), that’s probably what I’m going to end up using for most of my devices since most of them are flash storage devices.

I’m not sure what the differences are between them but what I’m looking for, BTRFS calls “transparent file compression”. I want the files to be compressed when added to the device but still fully accessible as if they aren’t. As I stated in my post, BTRFS supports this and I was able to set it up. I was told by multiple users that F2FS also supports this but if it does, it’s not working for me.

I’ve gotten BTRFS to work and I’m going to use that for most of my devices. I’m not sure if I’m going to use ZFS though, the documentation that I was given for how to use it seems to be written from the perspective of someone who already knows how the it works and not from the perspective of someone who doesn’t, so I’m very confused by it.

I’d like to get F2FS working on one of my devices though, but the commands needed to enable compression don’t seem to be working for me and I’m not getting any error messages so I have no idea how to fix it.

Is it read-only, or does it write the files at some point?

I apparently already have it installed but mkfs still thinks that zfs isn’t available. Am I supposed to use something else?

I don’t need it for my OS, I have a full 512 GB hard drive for my Linux Mint installation. I need this for specifically running games on old storage devices that hold less than 32 GB and have terrible read and write speeds.

I used a folder full of smaller files and it still isn’t compressing them. I’ve tried everything I can find or was told to do with f2fs but I cannot for the life of me, get files to compress. Btrfs works and files are compressing but it takes up so much space on the sd card.

Nope, I just reformatted sd card back to f2fs, mounted it the way both you and the documentation specified, and files are still not being compressed.

No I did read it, I did the commands like it said but files weren’t being compressed. I can try it again though, if it turns out I did still do something wrong.

Also, I tried formatting the sd card to btrfs without using gparted and it did work, and files are being compressed. Only problem is is that btrfs is using about 2/3 of the cd card, so I hope I can get f2fs working on it.

I read the page you linked to but I have no idea what I’m supposed to do with it. If it’s talking about using the “mount” command, I’ve already used that and even though I specifically enabled zstd as the compression method, files aren’t being compressed. I know this because I’m using a file that’s slightly larger than the free space but it’s still giving errors about not having enough space.

I actually figure out the problem, I was actually supposed to just enable compression and then use the command when mounting. Only problem is, it’s not compressing the files even though I mounted it with zstd enabled. I know this because I’m using a file that’s slightly larger than the free space but it’s still giving errors about not having enough space.

I figured out what I did wrong but now I’m getting a different error message. It’s saying “Error: Wrong features compress_algorithm=zstd” even though the page I was given says it should be possible. Any ideas on what I should do to fix that?

I figured out what I did wrong but now I’m getting a different error. It’s saying “Error: Wrong features compress_algorithm=zstd” even though the page you linked to specifies that that should be possible.

I’ve done some testing with f2fs and it does seem like what I want to go with but I can’t get compression working. Someone else linked me to this page but for some reason the command on that page gives an error message saying “Error: Failed to get the device stat!”. I already asked another user but assuming I can get it working, how would I change the command they provide to enable zstd compression. From what I’ve read, zstd is the compression method I want to be using.

I tried that before but it didn’t work properly for me as the compressed files would end up getting corrupted.

I tried to enable compression using the command they provide but it fails with an error saying “Error: Failed to get the device stat!”. Also, to make sure that I’m using the correct command line, how would I change the command they give to enable zstd as the compression method for all files.

I’m just going by what Linux Mint’s file manager says and it’s saying that the used space is about 40 MB with f2fs while it was about less than half of that when it was formatted to ext4.

What’s a RAM drive? I have 8 GB of RAM and I have ZRAM enabled, so I should have enough RAM for most of the files I’d consider using it for.

It is an sd card and I did just format it to f2fs but how do I enable the compression? It does seem much faster that ext4 but it seems to also take up more space on the sd card, as I’ve lost about 25% of the free space after formatting it, so I’d like to enable the compression.

As for zfs, I have been using Linux for over a few years at this point but I’ve mostly been avoiding some of the more complicated stuff. So if it is more complicated than what I originally thought, then I’ll avoid that for now as well.

I got brtfs working on a different storage device but I can’t tell if I set it up properly or not. I’m using the documentation that another user posted but it’s a bit confusing to me and I need to test it more.

For my 128 MB sd card, I am trying f2fs because that’s working. It does seem to write much faster than it did with ext4 but it seems to take up more space and it now has about 25% less free space, and it doesn’t seem to compress files. I’ll have to do more testing before I determine whether this what I go with or not.

As for squashfs, I probably don’t want that.

I’ll have to test that out more later but I did format the sd card to f2fs and it did seem to write files very fast when I did a simple test. The only issue I’m seeing is that it has about 25% less space than it did when I had it formatted for ext4, is that normal for f2fs?