Tip 23: Bytes per inodes

When you format a partition using Linux's primary file system, ext2, you have the choice of how many bytes per inode you want. From the man page:

-i bytes-per-inode

Specify the bytes/inode ratio. mke2fs creates an inode for every bytes-per-inode bytes of space on the disk. This value defaults to 4096 bytes. bytes-per-inode must be at least 1024.

This means that by using a smaller size, you will save disk space but may slow down the system. It is a space/speed trade off.

This is similar to one of FAT16/FAT32' major differences.