The EXT2 filesystem was written specifically for Linux, also by Rémy Card, to replace the Extended Filesystem.
It utilizes many Berkeley Fast File System (BSD FFS) concepts; FFS is also known as the UFS or Unix File System. The EXT2 filesystem was once the default FS for most Linux distributions.
The EXT2 filesystem is a non-journaling filesystem so recovery after a crash such as a power failure can take hours using fsck. The flip side of this is that performance is fast because data and metadata only need to be written once and not to the journal as well as the data area of the filesysem.
| Block size | 1K – 8K |
| Max file size | 16GB – 2 TB (depending upon block size) |
| Max number of files | Variable |
| Max volume size | 4TB – 32TB (depending upon block size) |
| Max filename size | 255 characters |
1. Refer to Decimal Naming and Prefixes for size comparisons.