What is Ext 2

Ext2 is the standard file system of GNU/Linux. The feature of it is the excellent
performance of accessing files. It shows its superiority for the small and medium size files.
This is mostly because of the fine design of its cluster cache layer.
The size of single file and the upper limit of file system capacity are related with the size of
cluster. The biggest cluster is 4KB in the common X86 computer system. So the upper
limit of single file is 2048GB, and upper limit of file system is 16384GB. But as the core 2.4
can only use the largest single partition 2048GB, so in fact the file system can be used is
only 2048GB.
--Source from http://www.powerdatarecovery.com/data-recovery/ext2.html

Formats
The Second Extended File System (ext2) is the
standard file system of Linux system. It is
attained by expanding the Minix file system. It
has a excellent feature of accessing files. In the
ext2 file system, files are uniquely identified by
inode (includes all the informations about
files). One file may correspond to a few file
names. Unless all the file names are deleted, the
related file can be deleted. Besides, one same
file has different inode when being saved or
being opened. The kernel is responsible for
synchronization.
Ext2 file system uses level-three indirect block
to save data block poiter. And the space is
allocated in block (default 1 KB). The strategy
of partition is to allocate logically contiguous
files to physically contiguous blocks and try the
best to allocate fragment to the least files, so
that to promote the performance on the whole.
Ext2 file system trys the best to put the files
(includes directories) under one directory to
one block, but directories to various blocks to
realize load balance. When expanding files, it
will expand 8 continuous block files in one time
(realized with reservation space).
1. Disk Organization
In ext2 system, the size of all the metadata structure is based on "block" instead of
"sector". The sizes of block are different with the different sizes of file system. A certain
amount of blocks forms a block group.At the initial position of every block group there are
diverse metadata structures that describe the attribute of it. In ext2 system, the definitions
of every structure are included in the source code include/linux/ext2_fs.h file.
2. Directory Structure
In ext2 file system, directories are saved as files. The root directory is always in the
second position of inode list. And the subdirectory is defined in the content of root
directory files. the directory entry is defined in include/linux/ext2_fs.h file.
3. File extended attributes
The attribute of one file is mostly the standard attribute of its inode structure, which also
includes other extended atributes (related to all the inode of the system, often used to add
extra functions), and it is defined in fs/ext2/xattr.h file. The i_file_acl filed of inode saves
the extended attributes' number of block. The head of attributes is at the initial position of

attributes block, thereafter attribute entry. Attributes value find the position according to
the attributes entry.