Revisiting Log-Structured File Systems for Low-Power Portable Storage

In this work we investigate the implica­tions on the energy consumption of different popular file systems and propose a novel, log-structured file system aiming at minimized energy consumption by avoiding expensive disk seeks and introduced laten­cies due to rotational delays. We show that the energy efficiency of file systems is heavily influenced by the underlying data layout and file organization. Guide­lines for a low power file system design are developed and evaluated with measurements of the energy con­sumption of a prototype implementation. As on-going work we investigate different approaches to free space management. We discuss design choices for the imple­mentation of a family of free space managers and their implications on energy consumption.